The Cypherpunk's 1995 Archive has been forged, and what are we going to do about it? (was:Re: Could someone add news of Cypherpunks Archive...

Douglas Lucas dal at riseup.net
Sat Nov 23 19:06:19 PST 2019


Via MuckRock I've filed nearly 100 requests:
https://www.muckrock.com/accounts/profile/douglaslucas/

Several of my requests have returned documents, and a few have formed
the basis of articles by me, e.g this one regarding our gentlehearted
friends at Stratfor --
https://web.archive.org/web/20160414073752/https://revolution-news.com/stratfor-wheres-truck/
-- or this one involving our scholarly friends at the Border Security
Operations Center in Texas
https://whowhatwhy.org/2014/07/16/exclusive-the-counterinsurgency-war-on-and-inside-our-borders/

Because corporations have a few times repeated me in watered down form,
i.e. because Vice and Salon have published me, echolalia or whatever, I
usually have success in getting agencies to waive or minimize fees,
saying the usual stuff about muh journalismszz. Not always though. A
while back, I asked the Texas state police for certain Stratfor g00dz
and they wanted a zillion dollars or something.

In the next 24-48 hours I'm working on a bunch of other FOIA requests,
including appeals... so I could send requests regarding Cypherpunks off
as well, if the list clarifies what agencies/offices are wanted.

Because, what agencies do you suspect might have long ago collections of
Cypherpunk emails? FOIAs have to go somewhere, to some agency or office.
Where, Jim and others, were y'all thinking of submitting FOIAs?

As far as I know, the raw data vacuumed up by federal spy agencies
haven't and won't be handed out to the public via FOIA. They'll cite any
one of multiple exceptions. I assume, but do not know for certain, that
other people have tried such open records requests for laughs, like
"From the NSA, I hereby request my photos I accidentally deleted back, I
emailed them to myself 10 years ago, does Joseph Maguire at the ODNI
have a copy please?"

It might be good to limit the request to the time frame from and
including 1 Jan 1995 to and including 31 Dec 1996, because the smaller
the scope of the request, the slightly less likely it is that the
gub'ment will delay forever, charge fees, say they don't have anything,
use some exception, ignore me much like my crushes, etc.

As I suggested above, I think it would be difficult/impossible to obtain
cypherpunk emails through FOIA from some agency's covert or clandestine
or otherwise shady program or other. Agencies usually use exceptions to
block such requests.

However, I wonder if there were any overt programs, agencies, offices,
bureaus, whatever that happened to keep an archive of the cypherpunks
email list. Maybe some program was liaising with a university for some
reason regarding computer-y internet-y technical crap. And that program
housed a bunch of email lists for scientific or advertising or
educational purposes.

In other words, don't think spies and covert shit. Maybe there's some
really overt, goofy program from back then that collected cypherpunks
emails as part of some straightforward educational or scientific or some
other mundane thing...?

Also, regarding to which agencies these open record requests shoudl go,
don't just limit imagination to the federal government. Many
agencies/offices/bureaus/etc. at the state, local, county, and other
levels of government will take open records requests as well.

Doug


On 2019-11-22 21:35, jim bell wrote:
> To Ryan Carboni,
> It looks like you are familiar with the practice of writing and filing
> Freedom of Information Act requests. 
> https://www.muckrock.com/accounts/profile/ryaz/  
> 
> Given that these requests can take a long time, I think it would be
> appropriate to make such a filing for any Cyperpunks mailing list
> emails, especially but not limited to those from 1995-1996.   Naturally,
> we will want the output on a computer readable format, such as writable
> CD, writable DVD, or some other downloadable file system.
> 
>   We will probably want to compare these emails from those that will be
> obtained by other sources.   What do you think?   Would you help this
> process?  Can you write the FOIA request?   Thank you.  
> 
>               Jim Bell
> e


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