Hi All, I would add its NOT just a mailing list, it IS instead an insane asylum and experiment in social darwinism where reputation capitol has replaced wealth in the currency of the group. just my .02
More plausible: it's evidence that you don't need anything as complex as cointelpro these days, just some inflammatory sock puppets. A list will proceed to eat itself alive in due course. Does anybody happen to curate this list into a more signal>noise form? I filter the noisier trolls, but everyone else then takes the troll-bait and things continue to spiral downwards. Who's actually here to discuss privacy and crypto? On 19/01/14 20:45, Anonymous Remailer (austria) wrote:
Hi All, I would add its NOT just a mailing list, it IS instead an insane asylum and experiment in social darwinism where reputation capitol has replaced wealth in the currency of the group.
just my .02
On Sun, 19 Jan 2014, Cathal Garvey wrote:
Does anybody happen to curate this list into a more signal>noise form? I filter the noisier trolls, but everyone else then takes the troll-bait and things continue to spiral downwards.
Rian Wahby is our "Curator".
Who's actually here to discuss privacy and crypto?
On 19/01/14 20:45, Anonymous Remailer (austria) wrote:
Hi All, I would add its NOT just a mailing list, it IS instead an insane asylum and experiment in social darwinism where reputation capitol has replaced wealth in the currency of the group.
just my .02
In the past, the list almost destroyed itself over the question of whether moderation equalls censorship, and a distributed list was created, where each feed was shared, but the moderation of what came in was decided by each node operator. I personally dont care about th S/N ratio too much, and as such, tend towards extremely light moderation of the silent variety. Obviously, Riad believes in open skies. As long as there is just one node, we really need an anything goes, each person needs to learn to control themselves approach. Me and Riad will be trying to hack mailmain inot a CDR system soon (the old one used the now long deprecated Majordomo scripting system). All the best, //Alif -- Those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent revolution inevitable. An American Spring is coming: one way or another.
On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 06:54:03PM -0600, J.A. Terranson wrote:
On Sun, 19 Jan 2014, Cathal Garvey wrote:
Does anybody happen to curate this list into a more signal>noise form? I filter the noisier trolls, but everyone else then takes the troll-bait and things continue to spiral downwards.
Rian Wahby is our "Curator".
Who's actually here to discuss privacy and crypto?
On 19/01/14 20:45, Anonymous Remailer (austria) wrote:
Hi All, I would add its NOT just a mailing list, it IS instead an insane asylum and experiment in social darwinism where reputation capitol has replaced wealth in the currency of the group.
just my .02
In the past, the list almost destroyed itself over the question of whether moderation equalls censorship, and a distributed list was created, where each feed was shared, but the moderation of what came in was decided by each node operator. I personally dont care about th S/N ratio too much, and as such, tend towards extremely light moderation of the silent variety. Obviously, Riad believes in open skies. As long as there is just one node, we really need an anything goes, each person needs to learn to control themselves approach.
Me and Riad will be trying to hack mailmain inot a CDR system soon (the old one used the now long deprecated Majordomo scripting system).
I want to apologize to everyone else for having to put up with me taking up the troll-bait and having a nice shit-wrestle. The experience (experiment?) did, however, confirm my personal conviction that privacy and anonymity are expensive, and we as a society generally have to pay that cost for others, and the cost continues to spiral out of control as surveillance capabilities spiral out of control. See subject {}coin for what I hope might be part of a solution. -- Troy
Dnia niedziela, 19 stycznia 2014 22:43:28 Troy Benjegerdes pisze:
On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 06:54:03PM -0600, J.A. Terranson wrote:
On Sun, 19 Jan 2014, Cathal Garvey wrote:
Does anybody happen to curate this list into a more signal>noise form? I filter the noisier trolls, but everyone else then takes the troll-bait and things continue to spiral downwards.
Rian Wahby is our "Curator".
Who's actually here to discuss privacy and crypto?
On 19/01/14 20:45, Anonymous Remailer (austria) wrote:
Hi All, I would add its NOT just a mailing list, it IS instead an insane asylum and experiment in social darwinism where reputation capitol has replaced wealth in the currency of the group.
just my .02
In the past, the list almost destroyed itself over the question of whether moderation equalls censorship, and a distributed list was created, where each feed was shared, but the moderation of what came in was decided by each node operator. I personally dont care about th S/N ratio too much, and as such, tend towards extremely light moderation of the silent variety. Obviously, Riad believes in open skies. As long as there is just one node, we really need an anything goes, each person needs to learn to control themselves approach.
Me and Riad will be trying to hack mailmain inot a CDR system soon (the old one used the now long deprecated Majordomo scripting system).
I want to apologize to everyone else for having to put up with me taking up the troll-bait and having a nice shit-wrestle.
The experience (experiment?) did, however, confirm my personal conviction that privacy and anonymity are expensive, and we as a society generally have to pay that cost for others, and the cost continues to spiral out of control as surveillance capabilities spiral out of control.
Indeed. However, *pseudonymity* offers the benefits of identifiability without many of the drawbacks of total anonymity. -- Pozdr rysiek
On 20 Jan 2014, at 19:40 , rysiek <rysiek@hackerspace.pl> wrote:
Dnia niedziela, 19 stycznia 2014 22:43:28 Troy Benjegerdes pisze:
The experience (experiment?) did, however, confirm my personal conviction that privacy and anonymity are expensive, and we as a society generally have to pay that cost for others, and the cost continues to spiral out of control as surveillance capabilities spiral out of control.
Indeed. However, *pseudonymity* offers the benefits of identifiability without many of the drawbacks of total anonymity.
In many ways psuedonymity is easier, but it does increase the importance of being very careful to avoid giving out revealing information. Over time, small details which are easily leaked (either explicitly, or through unintentional references to local facts, events, and jargon, areas of interest, personal details hinting at age, gender, etc., and so on), can build up into enough detail to identify a person down to a very few people, at least for those with the resources and inclination to make such an attempt. One strategy I have heard of to mitigate that risk is creating a deliberately false persona, one which lives in the same city but in totally different circumstances (changing their family relationships, type of house, etc.), and adjusting tehri comments to fit that, which reduces the risk of accidental disclosure but requires more effort than ordinary psuedonymity.
Dnia poniedziałek, 20 stycznia 2014 20:35:48 Philip Shaw pisze:
On 20 Jan 2014, at 19:40 , rysiek <rysiek@hackerspace.pl> wrote:
Dnia niedziela, 19 stycznia 2014 22:43:28 Troy Benjegerdes pisze:
The experience (experiment?) did, however, confirm my personal conviction that privacy and anonymity are expensive, and we as a society generally have to pay that cost for others, and the cost continues to spiral out of control as surveillance capabilities spiral out of control.
Indeed. However, *pseudonymity* offers the benefits of identifiability without many of the drawbacks of total anonymity.
In many ways psuedonymity is easier, but it does increase the importance of being very careful to avoid giving out revealing information.
Ah, apologies. I was unclear. I was refering to the perspective of a community, not the individual (as has Troy, I believe). As in: anonymity poses significant problems for any community that tries to honour it. For example anonymous remailer trolls and flames on this list are a concrete "cost" of the fact that the list accepts anonymous remailers. Pseudonymity (along with some reputation-based mechanisms) helps to alleviate that, to some extent, while retaining some of the most important advantages of personal anonymity. By the way, I'm perfectly okay with the cost-benefit trade-off we're making on this list with anonymous remailers, please do not treat the above as a suggestion (pardon! idea ;) ) to remove that option.
Over time, small details which are easily leaked (either explicitly, or through unintentional references to local facts, events, and jargon, areas of interest, personal details hinting at age, gender, etc., and so on), can build up into enough detail to identify a person down to a very few people, at least for those with the resources and inclination to make such an attempt.
Indeed.
One strategy I have heard of to mitigate that risk is creating a deliberately false persona, one which lives in the same city but in totally different circumstances (changing their family relationships, type of house, etc.), and adjusting tehri comments to fit that, which reduces the risk of accidental disclosure but requires more effort than ordinary psuedonymity.
Seems legit, thanks. -- Pozdr rysiek
The experience (experiment?) did, however, confirm my personal conviction that privacy and anonymity are expensive, and we as a society generally have to pay that cost for others, and the cost continues to spiral out of control as surveillance capabilities spiral out of control.
Two thoughts on this. Firstly, that this mailing list certainly does have well resourced enemies known to employ tactics like "persona management" and COINTELPRO, etc. etc.; I would actually find it implausible to assume they don't stir shit up to ruin the signal/noise ratio on the most overtly political applied-cryptography mailing list out there. Secondly, it's true that cheap ano/pseudo/nymity seems to permit people to express personality traits they would moderate if they had a reputation to maintain. This has often made me wonder about just why Anonymous seems *vaguely* stable despite the whole, (er, membership?) being anons. But of course, they're not Anons, they're Pseudons. Most of the active and influential membership go by names they've built reputational capital upon. They can't afford to throw that capital away by being dicks all the time. If they want to be dicks, they have to sock-puppet, and Anon discussion format is usually chat-based on moderated servers like IRC, so flames can get put out if the mod feels like it.. or high-signal people can migrate to a private room trivially. All of this makes pointless trolling like we're seeing on this list pretty expensive compared to a mailing list with little moderation. You can't afford to burn a 'nym because making a new 'nym is expensive (socially, if not computationally; nobody listens to a newfag), and there's simply no way to prevent high-signals from discussing things without you because Chat just works better that way. All very navel-gaze-y way of saying that Mailing lists are far more prone to the tragedy of the commons, and that if bloody Anonymous can do a better job of keeping the Signal ratio high then perhaps things need further thought. On 20/01/14 04:43, Troy Benjegerdes wrote:
On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 06:54:03PM -0600, J.A. Terranson wrote:
On Sun, 19 Jan 2014, Cathal Garvey wrote:
Does anybody happen to curate this list into a more signal>noise form? I filter the noisier trolls, but everyone else then takes the troll-bait and things continue to spiral downwards.
Rian Wahby is our "Curator".
Who's actually here to discuss privacy and crypto?
On 19/01/14 20:45, Anonymous Remailer (austria) wrote:
Hi All, I would add its NOT just a mailing list, it IS instead an insane asylum and experiment in social darwinism where reputation capitol has replaced wealth in the currency of the group.
just my .02
In the past, the list almost destroyed itself over the question of whether moderation equalls censorship, and a distributed list was created, where each feed was shared, but the moderation of what came in was decided by each node operator. I personally dont care about th S/N ratio too much, and as such, tend towards extremely light moderation of the silent variety. Obviously, Riad believes in open skies. As long as there is just one node, we really need an anything goes, each person needs to learn to control themselves approach.
Me and Riad will be trying to hack mailmain inot a CDR system soon (the old one used the now long deprecated Majordomo scripting system).
I want to apologize to everyone else for having to put up with me taking up the troll-bait and having a nice shit-wrestle.
The experience (experiment?) did, however, confirm my personal conviction that privacy and anonymity are expensive, and we as a society generally have to pay that cost for others, and the cost continues to spiral out of control as surveillance capabilities spiral out of control.
See subject {}coin for what I hope might be part of a solution.
-- Troy
On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 2:50 AM, Cathal Garvey <cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:
... Secondly, it's true that cheap ano/pseudo/nymity seems to permit people to express personality traits they would moderate if they had a reputation to maintain.
related: http://xkcd.com/137/
All very navel-gaze-y way of saying that Mailing lists are far more prone to the tragedy of the commons...
it is the year 2014. we have classification systems, labeling systems, tagclouding systems, machine learning systems, ... and you're still complaining about having to infrequently operate a trivial mail filter to avoid trollbait? [my contempt for this thread well reflected via large attachment!]
you're still complaining about having to infrequently operate a trivial mail filter to avoid trollbait?
Should I blacklist the Austrian remailer then, and cut out all decent uses of it as well as the bullshit? How about people who are fairly high-signal until they get into mud-wrestling? Humans are hard to "filter". If they weren't, they'd be really dull. On 20/01/14 11:27, coderman wrote:
On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 2:50 AM, Cathal Garvey <cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:
... Secondly, it's true that cheap ano/pseudo/nymity seems to permit people to express personality traits they would moderate if they had a reputation to maintain.
related: http://xkcd.com/137/
All very navel-gaze-y way of saying that Mailing lists are far more prone to the tragedy of the commons...
it is the year 2014. we have classification systems, labeling systems, tagclouding systems, machine learning systems, ... and you're still complaining about having to infrequently operate a trivial mail filter to avoid trollbait?
[my contempt for this thread well reflected via large attachment!]
On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 3:33 AM, Cathal Garvey <cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:
... Should I blacklist the Austrian remailer then, and cut out all decent uses of it as well as the bullshit? How about people who are fairly high-signal until they get into mud-wrestling?
Humans are hard to "filter". If they weren't, they'd be really dull.
brute force so inelegant; did not say it was key match filter, only that you've got the tools for sophisticated categorizing, hiding, and re-tuning at your disposal. no you don't have to but you should and will find it enlightening[0]. it's bonus level when playing SMTP on INTERTUBES :) 0. regarding conspiring communicators: like full take, your algorithmic puppet behavior fixed in record now until the infinite future, linkability only ever increasing... i'm doing my part to train your tools since before you were watching! *grin* email actually convenient to work with for this type of processing compared to other channels like custom forums, javascripty-and-comety "Web 2.0" services, etc.
"J.A. Terranson" <measl@mfn.org> wrote:
Riad Wahby is our "Curator".
And a poor one indeed :) Lest anyone misinterpret the quotes, I assure you I do nothing of the sort. The *only* filtering that goes on is subscriber whitelisting. I've been subscribed to cpunks in one form or other since the early 90s, and thinking back to those days makes the worries about SNR on the list now seem like nothing. By my recollection it wasn't until circa 2001 that any of the distributed remailer nodes even had sender whitelisting; even with the worst flaming the SNR now is an order of magnitude better than what we'd get prior to Ericm's LNE.com node. -=rsw
On Mon, 20 Jan 2014, Riad S. Wahby wrote:
"J.A. Terranson" <measl@mfn.org> wrote:
Riad Wahby is our "Curator".
And a poor one indeed :)
Ditto. My sole advantage is I have free colo, and lots of extra hardware, with a n/c 100mbit connection. As long as I don't have to spend money, I can support just about anything.
Lest anyone misinterpret the quotes, I assure you I do nothing of the sort. The *only* filtering that goes on is subscriber whitelisting.
I've been subscribed to cpunks in one form or other since the early 90s,
Same.
and thinking back to those days makes the worries about SNR on the list now seem like nothing. By my recollection it wasn't until circa 2001 that any of the distributed remailer nodes even had sender whitelisting; even with the worst flaming the SNR now is an order of magnitude better than what we'd get prior to Ericm's LNE.com node.
Oh yes! I'm sure that toad is still swamped with incoming spam, especially after it started to be used as an attack vector in the mid 90s. this *may* be an issue going forward, but I doubt it: only admins can open up mailman to attack vectors, and that may even be closed by now. I've been running mailman since it came out, although I havent updated any of the installed bases in a few years (as fresh upgrades were always a nightmare under mailman). Mailman is incredibly easy to install (once you get past the *awful* instructions and just figure it out!), and doesn't open itself to the many types of crazyness that majordomo did (not to say that majordomo wasnt a great platform for it's time - it was. But traffic up until 95/96 wasn't that heavy either. Another thing that will be nice about mailman vs majordomo is you won't get the situation where your posts come in from what appears to be different places: in the archives I noted that I had multiple posts under a half dozen "names", depending on the workstation I was sitting at when I hit send. Majordomo made a LOT of assumtions which usually turned out to be wrong... The repeater is the key. I think it should be a stand alone piece of code, not a script, so that I can run it as any other service (or, *someone* can run it as a service!). There should be somekind of fallback for the repeater as well: if it goes down, the entire CDR shouldn't go with it. Maybe a heartbeat system coupled with elections as to masters/backup slaves. This kind of setup has DNS implications though: the TTL would need to be *very* low, and other repeaters who need to step up in case of outage need a mechanism to change the DNS for the repeater. -=rsw > //Alif -- Those who make peaceful change impossible, make violent revolution inevitable. An American Spring is coming: one way or another.
participants (8)
-
Anonymous Remailer (austria) -
Cathal Garvey -
coderman -
J.A. Terranson -
Philip Shaw -
Riad S. Wahby -
rysiek -
Troy Benjegerdes