About lawyers and spoliation

[Aimee Farr]

Tim.....

> >>  Banal, actually.
> >
> >Maybe to you, Tim, but I was looking at it from a different perspective.
> >
> >First, in regard to dissident group bulletproofing, so as to provide the
> >greatest First Amendment associational protections. (I suspect
> some of you
> >get your legal advice from the government.) And, also in regard
> to dissident
> >group surveillance. This list has been affected by recent events, and
> >"subjectively chilled." While it is not the first time for such
> things, the
> >effects on group dynamics are of interest to me.
>
> You need to learn about the severe limitations of "security through
> obscurity."

I wasn't speaking of "security through obscurity," I was speaking of
"security through First Amendment law suit." Nobody could argue "objective
chill" in here, that's a legal concept....but clearly, you aren't
interested.

> (The only reason we have sometimes considered having an encrypted
> list is to a) weed out those unwilling to figure out how to do PGP,
> b) make PGP use more widespread. The notion of keeping the contents
> "secret" was not even debated seriously.)

Well, that figures.

> Sociobabble handwaving about "effects on group dynamics" doesn't
> change this. So you think that just throwing in some words about
> "value propositions" and "conversational economics" is the way to put
> forward a real idea or argument? Looks like bullshitting to me. Like
> the output of an Internet rant generator.

YOU are calling ME an Internet rant generator?

> >Second, I would like to see the conversational economic theories
> at work in
> >a protected list.
>
> Sociobabble. First, an encrypted or stegoized list would not be
> protected. See above. Second, it has nothing to do with
> "conversational economic theories" (?).

Conversational economics and privacy -- what I should have said. Posed as an
explanation for some surveillance law. See An Economic Theory Of Privacy,
Richard A. Posner. The same Judge Posner of Torres case fame. "There is no
right to be left alone while assembling bombs in safe houses." United States
v. Torres, 751 F.2d 875 (7th Cir.1984). Not a theory I subscribe to.

> >Third, many of your concepts were harbingers of a shift where people take
> >costly evasive maneuvers to protect what is legal, and traditionally
> >highly-valued speech and association (being critical of the government).
> >Your ideas are being implemented, or examined, often by ordinary
> people with
> >less spectacular motives and aims. So, the more "trodden," "banal,"
> >.....[insert Tim Mayism here]...something is to you, the more
> interesting it
> >is to me.
>
> You are blithering. I don't think you have the foggiest idea what is
> being talked about. And instead of learning, you just blither.

......

> You keep apologizing. Is this some kind of chick thang?

....

> do some very _basic_ reading.

Right back atcha.

> Once you grok what remailer networks are all about, you'll (maybe)
> have an epiphany that all the yammer about IP addresses defeating
> remailers is nonsense. And once you grok the idea of how sending
> encrypted mail out to list of N people, where N is 100 or more, and
> where subscription is lightly controlled, is pointless. (In fact,
> cell sizes as small as 3 are infiltrated, but this is an issue I
> don't have the desire to get into here.)

I didn't say IP addys were nonsense, Tim. I overhead some silly biometric
conversation and mentioned it because Ray mentioned IPs.

> Stop fucking apologizing you stupid twit.

Certainly.

> >
> >Perhaps I can contribute in other areas, Tim. I will try to do better. I
> >mean that sincerely.
>
> Stop apologizing. Instead of blithering about "conversational
> economics" and "value propositions" and "I'm sorry," spend ONE
> FUCKING HOUR reading the most basic of all papers, a paper now 20
> years old. I gave you the subject, year, and author. (Hint: It was
> Webbed as of a few months ago. I just checked: it still is. But
> rather than even expect you to find it, here it is:
> http://world.std.com/~franl/crypto/chaum-acm-1981.html)

Why, thank you, Tim.

>
> If this paper uses terminology too distant from later Cypherpunks
> technology, read any of the 1992-93 articles folks like Eric Hughes,
> Hal Finney, and myself wrote. Or read my Cyphernomicon entries on how
> remailers work.
>
> (I fully expect you to announce that you _do_ understand how they
> work. But clearly you don't, else you wouldn't have commented that
> biometric IP linking will be a problem.

Dammit, I didn't say that.

I said: "I've seen predictions that by 2005-7, your IP will be biometrically
associated. (I have nothing to back to that up, but the source was
credible.)"

It was a mere reference to Bear mentioning IPs and third-party
intermediaries... (Hence, the cites.)  I didn't say anything about
remailers.

> A _real_ legal issue, one we
> have discussed many times, is the constitutionality of a law
> requiring accountability for all forwarded messages. A law requiring
> all chunks of text to be traceable to a true name violates the usual
> 1st A protections, supported by the Supremes when they have struck
> down laws requiring handbills to have true names attached. Not to
> mention the anonymous authorship of the Federalist Papers. Not to
> mention many related issues. This is a more plausible attack on
> U.S.-based remailers than is something based on IP addresses. Left as
> an exercise for you.)

Indeed, what I was trying to get at might have been "somewhat related."

I agree with you in sentiment, but direct your attention to the CMRA
(commercial mail drop) requirements for domestic mail agency in the United
States in the USPS Domestic Mail Manual. I know you are aware of it.

> >You are a the leader of a pack of prize jackasses that pick on
> cripples in
> >here. *REAL* SUBVERSIVES have a gentlemanly demeanor (at least
> the decency
> >of pretense).
>
> Are you calling yourself a cripple? Not even I have called you a cripple.

.....

> You've shown no willingness to learn the most basic of things. You
> can't add legal advice that is useful if you don't even understand
> the most basic of things we talk about. In fact, your legal advice is
> almost certainly misleading if you don't even understand how nested
> remailers work, and why IP addresses aren't included in remailed
> messages, and why the robustness and obfuscation of a network of N
> remailers each pooling-and-remailing M messages goes _roughly_ as
> N^M. Thus, a nested hop through 10 remailers around the world, each
> pooling 10 incoming messages (of the same size after padding), would
> give an attacker _roughly_ 10 billion paths to follow.

Okay, well, I did learn something there.

> I keep saying "roughly" because there are numerous things that cut
> this down, not the least of which is that there aren't likely to be
> even tens of thousands of messages per day flowing through the
> world's remailers until there are a lot more of them, etc. And so an
> attacker cannot see a diffusivity of 10^10. But he also certainly
> cannot easily say which exiting message maps to which entering
> message. And there are the methods we so often have discussed: route
> messages through some remailers multiple times, send dummy messages
> at intervals, use your own machine as a remailer, and so on. It
> doesn't take long to see that the diffusivity (untraceability) can be
> very large very quickly and cheaply. And, no, no biometric or IP
> information is attached!

Bear just mentioned IP and I just threw out the biometric comment. I was
curious, since it did not make sense to me. I made no mention of remailers.

> If you have not grokked the idea of anonymous remailers, how can you
> comment on legal issues facing them?

*sigh* I didn't. Spoliation is a general concept. My comments were general
in nature. I don't think I used the word "remailer." You frequently rant off
into legal areas when you haven't briefed the law, Tim.

> As for your "torching" your work because I hurt your feelings, show
> some fucking backbone. If you are right, you don't need the moral
> support of others.

Now you are extrapolating. You didn't 'hurt my feelings' - you are just
gigging me. Furthermore, I wasn't looking for "moral support." And,
certainly not in here. :-)

~Aimee