Cypherpunks Charter

Stephen D. Williams sdw at lig.net
Mon Sep 5 14:03:18 PDT 2016


On 9/5/16 1:24 PM, John Young wrote:
> Also Eric Hughes: A Cypherpunk's Manifesto, 9 March 1993
>
> http://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html
Yes, I should have included that link.  Let's call it [EricCM].  I just reread it a day or two ago.  My short statement is an
attempt to condense that to its essence.

>
> Understanding distinction between privacy and secrecy is essential,
> for it is secrecy that corrupts in all its forms and is totally hostile to
> privacy, and true privacy totally hostile to secrecy. Privacy policies are
> fraudulent because they allow secretkeepers to violate privacy with
> "lawful" impunity. Which is why Snowden, Tor, media, corporations,
> NGOs, security experts, dual hatters, lawyers, privileged parties of
> all stripes, and many others are masterful bullshitters to urge
> "curation," censorship, withholding, redacting information by
> which secretkeepers empower themselves against the public by
> "self-regulated" access, that is self-serving.

That seems like a nuanced use of 'secrecy'.  This extends what is in [EricCM].  If you want your own privacy but you want to deprive
others, whether individual or organization, of theirs, I think you need to be specific about what situations you are talking about.

>
> It is ridiculous to believe technical crypto by itself will not be subverted
> for political purposes, that mathematics will provide sufficient protection
> against wily opponents lawfully empowered to use any methods required
> to exploit vulnerabilities in people, technology, governance (standards
> setting, education, contracts, advisory boards, prizes, leaks, bribery,
> coercion -- partially listed in the troll tools, but far from all).

Where is the line between "used for efficient and safe functioning of government" and "subverted for political purposes"?  Debating
that line seems off topic.

>
> From day one and continuing, cypherpunks warned of the unavoidable
> corruption of the list by malevolent subscribers, as well as of the
> Internet and digital technology in general. This malevolence has
> come to pass worldwide, through a range of treacheries from
> anonymization to crypto to HTTPS to OTR to leak sites to universities,
> to whatever tool is funded and promoted as the hot shit latest means
> to defy authority. Authority always wins. As authority bullshits and
> honors and hires those too timid to exceed conventional cowardice.

Authority always wins because, in a healthy system, authority is us.  You have to first narrow your scope to 'abusers' or 'actually
corrupt politicians' or similar if you want to 'win' against them.  This is the same problem as treating all civilians as criminals
or thugs or whatever: If you aren't specific, you fail.

>
> Few cypherpunks have gone to jail for their convictions, many more have
> gone on to pretty good paying jobs, start-ups, buy-outs by IBM, MS, Cisco,
> Google, others in cahoots with authority. But some have seduced others to
> go to jail, crying ACLU-EFF-Greenwald grade crocodile tears at the injustice
> (advertising "donate to us" for the poor suckers). Blaming the victim of
> this seduction is rife as it is in deliberately faulty, highly monetized comsec.
>
> If all goes well, cataclismic cyberwar will provide the doomsday climax to
> persistent cypherpunk screwing. Assange aims at just that having imbibed
> the cryptoanarchy joy juice here. Tim May will continue to ridicule the fool
> as he did Jim Bell and CJ. This is the cypherpunk secret charter for being
> a bullshitting "force for good."

Playing here and making good life choices are all about critical thinking.  If you have gaps there, they may be amplified here.

Assange may or may not have had an interesting point in certain past situations.  But, at a glance, his preoccupation with
Hillary-insanity-complex and doing anything to feed it seems terminal.  As noted in an article from the last couple days, Hillary's
problems really started when she decided to be private about Whitewater details.  That attempt at privacy caused everyone to flip
out.  Kind of ironic as Eric's Manifesto specifically encourages privacy.

>
>> [1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism
>> [2] http://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/crypto-anarchy.html
>

sdw

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/html
Size: 6692 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/attachments/20160905/77e4372b/attachment.txt>


More information about the cypherpunks mailing list