Anonymous Posting

Faustine a3495 at cotse.com
Wed Aug 22 13:09:43 PDT 2001


anonymous wrote:
Faustine wrote:
> So why is it that the vast majority of the technical and insightful
> contributions here seem to come from people who aren't averse to
> using a reasonable simulacrum of a real name and address?

>I find the content from remailers is far higher than average for the
>list.

Fine, but "average" in this context isn't as useful as measuring the top n 
percent in terms of total value of information to any given participant. 


> I made the deliberate choice not to use a remailer because I think
> it's more interesting to contribute while having a prior body of
> posts "attached" to me. People come to know more what to expect--and
> if I irritate/bore/piss them off too much, they stop reading
> me. Which is exactly as it should be.
>>So sign your messages.  With your true name, if that's important.

I wonder why you seem to have missed my point about services like Hushmail 
and Cotse. 


> Though if you're after complete privacy re: your opinions and the
> details of your life, you're better off not writing them down in the
> first place, here or anywhere else.
>>The technology isn't there yet, true, but it won't get there without
>>deploying it and using it.  Why isn't this obvious?

Even if the technology were 100% reliable, it's a matter of common sense.  
No amount of technology will ever keep you from trusting the wrong person, 
writing down something you should have kept in your head, or blabbing when 
you should have kept your mouth shut. 

In an absolute sense, "complete privacy" is only possible with an absence 
of communication signifiers. Developing privacy-enhancing technology, on 
the other hand, is absolutely crucial. But as I agree with what Bruce 
Schneier said about there being no such thing as "absolute security", I 
think it's always going to be a matter of what's "private enough" for any 
given situation.

How "high stakes" you find posting to a mailing list depends on your 
particulars. And for me, Hushmail and Cotse are fine. If somebody is hell 
bent on fucking me over--here or elsewhere--the best remailer in the world 
won't help if they have the requisite knowledge, time, and resources.

And I never said there was anything wrong with using a remailer. It's just 
that in the context of participating in a list, I think people tend to act 
worse since they have no real (or even symbolic) attachment to anything 
they say. I used to use a remailer to post to another list every single day 
for months. But I enjoy it more being a little more connected to it the way 
I participate here, that's all. 


> I assume everyone here weighed those considerations for themselves
> before they got here: as far as I'm concerned, nobody has the
> slightest business deciding it for anyone else.

>Don't worry, the cypherpunks list isn't going anywhere.  It's just not
>realistic to put that genie back in the bottle.  It would have to be a
>separate list entirely or one which rode on the current cypherpunks
>list.

If your goal is to get rid of the technically incompetent and improve the 
quality of the list's content, you have to weigh the possibility of the 
bullshitting troll quotient going way, way up as well. And anyway, I think 
you're overestimating the skill level needed to use one: sure, the absolute 
cretins will have to go, but it remains to be seen how much moronic 
juvenalia will still be left over. Unfortunately, being intelligent and 
being immature are not mutually exclusive.  


>We may not be able to decide for others, but we can certainly look
>down on so-called cypherpunks who, in many cases, cannot even encrypt
>a message, never mind "writing code".

So are you basing your assessment of who to look down on solely on whether 
or not they use PGP and remailers here, or are you going by the total 
informative content(or lack thereof)in their posts? Personally, I wouldn't 
be too quick to assume I know what anyone around here can or can't do. 


>  Many, in fact, exhibit
>hostility towards remailers and anonymity, as you do.

That is a gross misreading of what I said. In the context of 
addressing "what makes participating in a list worthwhile", I just don't 
believe dictating from on high "everyone must use a remailer" is going to 
fix all the problems you think it will. And it'll probably create a lot 
more new ones. But I could be wrong, it'll be interesting to see how it 
turns out if you actually get one going.


>What I fail to understand is why such people are on this list in the
>first place, but, as you say, people make their own decisions.
>(None of these comments apply to Tim May, of course.)

Interesting how you know full well when you really need to make an 
exception to your too-broad generalization about people who use their real 
names on the list.

~Faustine.





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