List administrivia (Re: Whom, specifically, is our greatest ally? - (spoiler: Australia)) - [PEACE]

[jim bell]

 On Sunday, November 3, 2019, 06:22:07 PM PST, Greg Newby <gbnewby at pglaf.org> wrote:
 
 
 >1. MISSING MESSAGES THIS WEEK

>Jim: I set your list options to select "ACK" and unselected "nodupes." The impact is that you should get an email acknowledgment whenever a message is accepted and (presumably) distributed and archived. The "nodupes" might have no impact, but it is supposed to quash multiple copies of messages when selected.
Yes, I noticed the change before I noticed your mention of it.   Thank you.

>Because you sent multiple emails to the list today, I don't have an easy way to check whether there was some sort of problem (like a spam-type rejection) from one of them. If you are ever suspicious that something got blocked or didn't make it, AND can tell me the specific time, I can check the logs.
Okay, I hope that service doesn't become necessary,  As I think I said today, I don't recall a prior time (in the last few weeks, at least) where it appeared that one of my postings to CP never eventually appeared or was unusually delayed, although I admit that I don't typically pay close attention since the system has usually been so reliable.  I was alerted to recent talk on the list which suggested some failures, and when I made a posting this morning that apparently had not yet appeared 74 minutes later, and the list appeared virtually dead, I concluded that my first attempt had been lost.
>As I have mentioned here before, the PGLAF.org server that runs lists.cpunks.org has graylisting and a few other anti-spam measures. But clearly most of your messages are being handled correctly.


Do you have any idea of what I might inadvertently do to a message that might cause it to be rejected?  I have the same message on my computer; I could resend it, but I didn't and don't want to clutter the system with test-junk.

>Anyone else who wants to twiddle their list settings can visit https://lists.cpunks.org/mailman/listinfo/cypherpunks (and Jim can email me to revert what's above, if desired).
For a few days, I'm happy with the new setting.  I wish these systems alerted me (or themselves) to failures to accept data.  

>2. MISSING MESSAGES FROM 1995
>As has already been written, the PGLAF server has only hosted the list since around August of 2016. Previously, Riad Wahby hosted the list. I first subscribed in the early 2000s. The archive copies I have at 
  https://www.petascale.org/cypherpunks/ came from a couple of other people.

My attempt to access the Archive of the CP list, about 4 days ago, was approximately my first in many years.  If I ever accessed it before, I don't even recall why.  4 days ago, I think I just did a google-search for 'cypherpunk archive', and visited that site.  I found a file which appeared to be the correct one for 1995, accessed it (by my Chrome browser), and yet I found virtually no instances of "jim bell", "jimbell at pacifier.com", "ap", or "assassination politics".  Initially, I sure wondered if I must have done something wrong...


>For anyone looking at those copies, note that the mbox files have some problems (spam, and some messages with bad headers that can confuse or even crash email clients).

I am unaware if such a thing affected my initial viewing or my later viewings, but since other people seem to be observing the same thing, I think we are all confident that we are seeing the same problem.

>It is clear in these archives that the messages that Jim says do not exist, do not exist. There is no obvious evidence of redaction. For example, I wondered whether there would be responses to messages that Jim posted, but not the original messages. I didn't find any. Ditto for the messages from Bill Frezza.
Well, my current idea is that all messages:1.  From me.2. To me.3.  Containing references about me.  (yet numerous references to 'bell' remain, when that refers to something other than 'jim bell'.4  containing references to "AP", "assassination politics" are missing.5.  Very rare instances of the text string 'ap', about 15, seem to exist, but those instances are ones in which the meaning is (mostly) 'associated press'.  I recall one reference to 'killer ap', with only one 'p'.  I think these instances must have been intentionally retained.
I conclude that a very sophisticated tampering has been done, although perhaps it wouldn't have been too difficult.  If they had:

1.  Erased all threads about AP.2.  then Erased all emails from me or to me, with a very small exceptions, or contained 'assassination politics, or 'jim bell'.3.   Perhaps hand-searched all emails containing 'ap' (or ' ap ') and removed all those in which 'ap' referred to "assassination politics", or 'bell' or 'jim', where I am a subject.
It was a thorough job, although anyone unaware of the events of 1995 would probably not have noticed the omissions,.   I have some ideas about why they bothered to do this, but they clearly didn't expect to be able to remove the concept of "assassination politics" from the face of the Earth, especially given the massive references still present in the 1996 archive and (I would hope) for many years thereafter.  This is a genuine mystery, and I am confident that the CP list and CP's in general will be much better off when the full circumstances of this sham are investigated and exposed. 

>  ** IF YOU FIND OTHER (different) COPIES of the archive, please get them to me and I'll add them to what's above.
I wish I had my 1995-1997-era computer(s), but I don't.

>In the early 2000s, the list existed via a series of "cypherpunks distributed remailers" (CDRs). It is absolutely true that the content from each CDR was different: different headers, different time stamps, and different spam. 
Wouldn't earlier data have been transferred to a CDR? It would have probably been the most compact and easy-to-generate storage medium of that era.
At this point, I am not aware that the contents of any year other than 1995 has been called into question, but I haven't checked.  But that is not much reassurance:  Clearly, the 1995 omissions didn't alert anyone else on the CP list, although I know virtually nothing about the mechanics of the archiving process. I identified the problem simply because I knew what to look for, and yet never saw it.   I say again that Cypherpunks from the 1995 must be alerted, because this is clearly a 'war' against the CP list, and it is a big mystery what they were trying to cover up.  And if 'they' are trying to cover it up, _I_ want to expose it even more !!!
To quote the 1980 TV version of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxEqIt-NUSY   
[two nuclear missiles had just been fired at the Heart of Gold spaceship as it orbited fabled planet Magrathea, which is 'on vacation' until the Galactic Stock Market value has returned high enough to allow rich people to buy custom-made planets, again.]
Zaphod Beeblebrox:        "Hey this is terrific!  They are trying to kill us!  You know what that means?"Earth-man Arthur Dent     "Yes, we're going to die."Zaphod:                            "Yeah!  uh, no, no, maybe.   Look, it means there's something down there they don't want us to have.  And if                                           they don't want us to have it that badly, I want to have it even worse!"

(one of the very few advantages of being old is that you have seen more things...if you still have a memory good enough to remember them.  And I've found that if you can remember a piece of video, you can probably find it on YouTube.  One of the wonders of the modern world.  Has anybody here ever FAILED to eventually find a piece of video they wanted to see?)


>I do not know the provenance of the copies above. I can tell you that I didn't edit/redact them (a README tells what I did to eventually ingest alongside lists.cpunks.org archives). 

I don't think we have to do anything close to a full re-generation of the proper state of the 1995 archive, in order to determine what was omitted.  A chronological-order set of any emails  (just stuck together by text) that would have been deleted would be plenty.  
It would also be useful to be able to track the identities of the  'new' posters coming in to the list, and 'old' posters leaving. (Both in 1995 AND in 2019!)   Whatever they want to conceal, it presumably occurred sometime in 1995, and not later.
Also, keep in mind that tampering with this computer-data was a Federal felony.  https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/criminal-ccips/legacy/2015/01/14/ccmanual.pdf    If this is publicized sufficiently, we hope prosecutors will have no choice but to go after their own.    
Some things ought to be checked (Wayback?).   I hope everyone agrees that at least figuring out what happened, and when it happened, will be extremely beneficial.    Most people will want the archive corrected, a very worthy goal in itself.  I hope archivist Tom Busby will be sufficiently offended by this attack on the archive that he will be motivated to help in the process.

>I agree with Jim's suggestion that we seek other copies of archives, or individuals who might have a complete personal archive from them. Some of the long-departed CDR admins like Jim Chote and John Gilmore might have such records. If anyone knows who was running CDRs in the 1992-1997 period, I will be happy to reach out to them.

Writable CD's presumably held 640 megabytes.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_disc  
 Wouldn't that be much more than a year's output of CP?  

>Best,
>Greg
Excellent!


On Mon, Nov 04, 2019 at 12:49:22AM +0000, jim bell wrote:
>  On Sunday, November 3, 2019, 01:34:48 PM PST, Zenaan Harkness <zen at freedbms.net> wrote:
>  
>  
>  >What I do when I'm unsure and want to check, is check the cp archives here:
> 
> >    The cypherpunks Archives
> 
> >view by date, and look at the most recent emails.
> 
> 
> Unfortunately, your response is (un-?)intentionally hilarious.  It wouldn't have been so a week ago, before I started exposing the most huge scandal of corruption tampering that Cypherpunks archives has ever seen, a massive fabrication of some of the CP archives,  Back then, there was at least the illusion that the CP archives had a minimal level of credibility.  
> And here, above, you ask me to "check the CP archives".
> Worse, you don't even bother to explain if you actually received the first attempt of my morning email, a claim which at least in principle would have provided a bit of further indication whether my first attempt had actually succeeded, or had failed.   That is obviously the first, most immediate piece of information that you could have done.   
> And you didn't.  Remember what 'they' say, "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem".
>             Jim Bell
> 
>  


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