May's Banal Rant

[Tim May]

This is the second in the series of articles I am forwarding from the
"sublist" discussion I mentioned. Again, I am excising all pointers to the
identity of the person who wished his views not be publicized.

This is the longest of the articles.

--Tim


>Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 12:07:48 -0700
>To: xxxxx
>From: Tim May <tcmay at got.net>
>Subject: Re: May's Banal Rant
>Cc: xxxxxx

>At 11:00 AM -0700 6/2/97, xxxxx wrote:

(Thanks me for not being venomous, as he had been expecting, and says he
was not on the Cypherpunks list in 1993 so he doesn't recall what it was
like back then.)

>I can tell you that much of the discussion back then was about the precise
>things I have  had in my .sig all these years (the core part).  And this
>was during the incidents at Ruby Ridge and Waco.
>
>Is calling for a bounty in untraceable cash to be placed on the head of
>the shooter at Ruby Ridge, one Lon Horiuchi, radical enough for you? (The
>BATFags consider such threats seriously enough that Horiuchi apparently
>now has a new identity, accoding to my militia friends, who say no
>"Horiuchi" can be found in any current records they have searched...and
>one of their sources in the Empire confirmed this.)

(Says the tone of the list and of Libertarian politics is more strident
than it has ever been.)

>Actually, I was around during the anti-Viet Nam war days--I voted for John
>Hospers of the LP in 1972, and participated in various anti-war events at
>UC Santa Barbara, including a notable evening when Highway 101 was shut
>down for several hours by protestors. The level of rancor between
>government and others (including Libertarians) was vastly greater.
>
>And in 1993 the Clipper announcement was met with incredible venom on the
>list. You really need to go back and read what was said about Denning,
>Freeh, Kallstrom, and Herr Clinton. We even had a couple of emergency
>physical meetings, and the level of sabotage discussed was far greater
>than anything recently.
>
>Also, those "radical days" saw some very radical stuff indeed. The
>anonymous posting of the corporate secrets of the traitorous company
>Mykotronx helped to nuke that company. Ditto for the Clipper internal
>memoranda posted to the list via remailers.
>
>(Nowadays we'd have a list member working for Mykotronx and urging us to
>be "more reasonable.")
>
>Also, 1993-4 was the heyday of the Zimmermann imbroglio, and there was
>much heated discussion of this.
>
>(Nowadays, Zimmermann wants Cypherpunks to rally behind his company's GAK
>system, and he is aghast at the "anarchy" discussed on the list. He was
>opposed to the libertarian ideology of the list back in '93-94 of course,
>but then it suited him to have the Cypherpunks defending him. Now he views
>us as impediments to his business prospects, and employees of PGP, Inc.
>are now _very_ circumspect about what they write on the list.)
>
>I agree that there is a sense of "enough is enough" in the Cypherpunk
>community these days. Everytime we turn around there are new restrictions,
>new calls for censorship, new clamorings for controlling the Net, and even
>new arrests.
>
>I disagree that the posts of today are significantly more strident than
>they were in the Clipper days, or the Waco days, etc. Maybe a few comments
>have sounded especially angry, but these are angry times. Again, if you
>don't like the threads, start some of your own.
>
>I believe I'm under a fair risk of being named as a co-conspirator of
>Bell's...some of my e-mail to him is probably what the cops are referring
>to when they speak about using cryptography to facillitate markets in
>various acts. Yes, this has made me prepare for a raid on my home, and,
>yes, I have bought a couple of cases of ammunition and made sure my stuff
>is ready. I don't intend to be shot in the middle of the night in the dark
>as i reach for a handgun to defend myself when the "entry team" ignores
>the Fourth Amendment and simply bursts into my room.
>
>(Lost in the modern debate about rights is how we got to this stage, to
>where it is _expected_ that cops will dress in paramilitary garb (Nomex
>ski masks, black clothing, carrying suppressed MP-5s) and launch raids on
>the homes of suspects. No knocks on the doors, no presentation of
>duly-authorized search warrants, no punishment for those who kill
>innocents or others on such searches.... what a fucked up country we have
>become.)

(He says that many influential posters to Cypherpunks no longer post.)


>I still post. That so many others don't is not my problem. (Hint: Analyze
>the archives to see who used to post a lot. Many of them--in fact,
>essentially _all_ of them--decreased their posting volumes long before the
>comments of mine in the last few months that you seeem to think drove them
>away. Look at the actual numbers.)
>
>For various and sundry reasons. I won't catalog them again here, even
>though I've thought of some additional important reasons I left out
>earlier. Maybe I'll write a new essay on how the list has changed and how
>the membership taxonomy works out.

(He says that I am more provocatively violent-sounding in my posts the past
few months than before.)


>In a few instances, yes. So? People have various views at various times.
>And I'd say calling for an anonymous murder contract on Horiuchi was
>pretty violent-sounding. (Such calls were not made by me, though I've
>recently said the killers of Donald Scott, the Malibu doctor raided by
>BATF/LA officers should be given a fair trial and if found guilty,
>executed. What's "violent" about expecting the same justice for cops that
>we see being applied to McVeigh, Kaczinski, and so on?)

(He claims that atttention from the media and from law enforcment in the
Cyphepunks list is probably greater now than in the past. Note from my
comments below that I disagree with him.)

>This is part of the "taxonomy of membership" I'm talking about. We get all
>kinds of subscribers. Some just hit-and-run, some clueless, some seeking
>support for their pet programs or products, some loonies. (If you think
>TruthMonger or that Circle of Eunuchs guy is any crazier than Detweiler
>was in '93-94, go back and read his stuff.)
>
>And in fact the media fascination with Cypherpunks was provably greater in
>'92-94 than today. Think of those big cover stories in Wired, Whole Earth
>Review, The Village Voice, etc.  This is so for various reasons, and I
>won't bemoan or applaud our current relative obscurity.

(He claims that for these various reasons my voice is probably more
dominant or influential than ever before--given the low volumes of posts, I
might agree--and says it is too bad I am so strident.)


>I am not writing that much differently than I did in earlier years, if you
>check the archives. I have made very few "shoot the pigs" comments.
>
>(And, by the way, the period surrounding Waco and Ruby Ridge was filled
>with discussions of armaments, calibers, etc. Some of the Bay Area CPs
>even started a shooting club....I have not gone to any of their shoots, as
>I live 100 miles south of San Francisco....plus, I have my own favorite
>ranges nearby and I'm not much on teaching newbies to shoot.)
>
>It is true that Eric Hughes is off doing other things. John Gilmore was
>never much a writer of essays, and he's now distanced himself from the
>list (for obvious reasons). Hal Finney still writes, but the reasons he
>writes less are obvious (job, and he's said things several times). And so
>on.
>
>Others have left the list. Peter Wayner is gone. Carl Ellison is gone. So?
>No one expected a perpetual level of interest. When I talk to Eric
>(Hughes), we both shake our heads in amazement that a group we started
>five years ago is still rolling along; we never set out to create a
>permanent group.
>
>And, unlike some groups which are almost explicity centered around a
>public spokesman or small cadre, the Cypherpunks group has never had a
>spokesman, never had a public charter, never had a policy analysis group,
>never had most of the things the alphabet soupers have had.
>
>We're just a virtual coffeehouse, or pub, or even Munich beerhall. Anyone
>is free to comment on anything. The only attempt at censoship--the recent
>one by Sandfort and Gilmore--failed miserably (and predictably) and in
>fact scattered the nexus of the group to multiple sites. (The role of that
>event, and the subsequent shrinkage of the list from 1200 subscribers to
>just about 200 subscribers, as best I can tell, is the subject of another
>essay. In my view, the attempted censorship of the list did grievous
>damage to the list, and inasmuch as we don't "recruit" for new members, it
>may be a long time before the list ever gets as active as it used to be,
>if ever. The low posting volume tends to magnify the significance of the
>posts which do appear...this is not something I see as my problem or my
>responsibility to try to change.)

>And it's a pity this entire discussion is not happening on the main list!
>
>You, xxxxx, choose to...<excised to protect his identity>... and to keep
>your comments off the list. I know ...<excised>.... but you really should
>be making your comments about the list and its topics ON THE LIST!
>
>Isn't this obvious? You can hardly complain about my "radical" views when
>you hold your counsel, can you?
>
>In fact, I'll respect your wish not to have your comments distributed
>beyond the list you have chosen, but I plan to take my own comments, sans
>your quotes, and use them as the basis of an essay to the list on these
>and related topics.
>
>In this regard, I thank you for catalyzing some thoughts.
>
>--Tim May
>
>

There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay at got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."