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...
jim bell
jdb10987 at yahoo.com
Sun Nov 24 11:47:24 PST 2019
Yes, it looks like this: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6553646-Socialmediamonitoring.html#document/p1 will be an excellent case to limit the government's ability to assert various forms of secrecy.
The FOIA could be filed in the Northern District of California, in order to ensure that this precedent is applicable. While in the last 3 years, we have seen a few examples of judges trying to interfere with President Trump's actions by filing nation-wide injunctions, the general rule is that a given Federal District Judge's authority is limited to the district he works in. There are exceptions, and they are vague enough to explain what this interference works with. Maybe the judge merely needs to issue a "finding", as phony as it might be.
This https://www.justice.gov/oip/blog/foia-update-oip-guidance-privacy-glomarization deals with the concept of "Glomarization", relating to a 1970' case: From paragraph 2:
"Specifically, a FOIA request seeking records which would indicate that a particular political figure, prominent businessman or even just an ordinary citizen has been the subject of a law enforcement investigation may require an agency to flatly refuse to confirm or deny whether such records exist. Such an extraordinary response can be justified only when the confirmation or denial of the existence of responsive records would, in and of itself, reveal exempt information. See FOIA Update, Spring 1983, at 5. This response, colloquially known as a "Glomar denial" or "Glomarization," was first judicially recognized in the national security context, see Phillippi v. CIA, 546 F.2d 1009, 1013 (D.C. Cir. 1976) (raising issue of whether CIA could refuse to confirm or deny its ties to Howard Hughes' submarine retrieval ship, the Glomar Explorer), but it surely is applicable elsewhere.""STIGMATIZING CONNOTATIONThe application of "Glomarization" in the privacy context is appropriate because disclosure of the mere fact that an individual is mentioned in an agency's law enforcement files carries a stigmatizing connotation, one certainly cognizable under FOIA Exemption 7(C), 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(C).See, e.g., Fund for Constitutional Government v. National Archives & Records Service, 656 F.2d 856, 865 (D.C. Cir. 1981) ("The disclosure of [the fact that specific individuals were the subjects of a criminal investigation] would produce the unwarranted result of placing the named individuals in the position of having to defend their conduct in the public forum outside of the procedural protections normally afforded the accused in criminal proceedings."); Baez v. Department of Justice, 647 F.2d 1328, 1338 (D.C. Cir. 1980) ("There can be no clearer example an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy than to release to the public that another individual was the subject of an FBI investigation."); see also Miller v. Bell, 661 F.2d 623, 631 32 (7th Cir. 1981) (identities of individuals merely mentioned in law enforcement records protected), cert. denied sub nom. Miller v. Webster, 456 U.S. 960 (1982); Maroscia v. Levi, 569 F.2d 1000, 1002 (7th Cir. 1977) (same)." [end of long quote]
I believe that the Feds should not be able to use this exception to block the release of the content of the Cypherpunks email data: The reason is that they did not suck up this data for the specific purpose of a "law enforcement investigation", and certainly not of a specific person. And this information was originally shared among hundreds (eventually thousands?) of people (the CP subscribers) that the government WASN'T investigating. A subscriber's mere participation in the CP email list should not be labellable as being "stigmatizing".
And presumably, this monitoring had been going on since shortly after the CP list began operating. The fact that some people on the list may eventually have been investigated doesn't mean that the information collection was related to them. And, the fact that the CP list monitoring occurred does not disclose that any of these subscribers were (or were not) under investigation at the time, or later.
And, this was not a "covert" operation: From the Feds' end, it would have been as simple as subscribing to the CP email list, and receiving the resulting emails, just as all of us do, and others previously did. If that information was later on used, by them, for investigatory purposes, that wouldn't have affected the initial collection process.
I believe that we can label the CP email list as being the "social media" of the 1990's. An email list was the tool people had to participate in joint discussions, long before the more-refined Facebook and Twitter. The "tool" necessary to collect that data, at the time, would have been simple: Just an email account, subscribed to the CP email list feeds. This Northern District of California https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191119/13132743414/judge-says-fbi-cant-keep-refusing-to-confirm-deny-existence-social-media-monitoring-documents.shtml case looks like it will support an FOIA case for the disclosure of the product of that monitoring.
This request should go to, at least, the FBI and the NSA. Now, the NSA was not (in 1995) supposed to collect data not crossing international boundaries, but even if only a single subscriber to the CP list was outside the US, that would 'authorize' the NSA to collect the specific email sent to him. And, that person would not have been 'under investigation'; they would simply have been receiving CP list emails. So, the Glomar exception shouldn't apply. And the NSA collected "everything", not simply specific wanted information. So I don't think that the label "covert" applies to this, or a specific "investigation".
The NSA should still have this data: Emails take merely a very tiny amount of hard-drive space. The entire CP email archive could probably fit on 1/100.000 of the largest hard drive available today. Three would have been no reason to erase any of it.
I can understand a reason to, initially, limit the request to the time period 1995-1996. And, probably there should be a FOIA request that is so limited. But we don't merely want to get all the original data, thus allowing us to recreate what the CP email Archive should have revealed: We want to find evidence of the forgery, if that is available. Perhaps evidence of that would be revealed if we also request all email records of the relatively few people who were involved in the keeping of the data, and later the generation of the CP email Archive. And yes, that will include all their private emails, not involved with the CP list, if those emails crossed international borders.
Jim Bell
On Saturday, November 23, 2019, 10:17:55 PM PST, jim bell <jdb10987 at yahoo.com> wrote:
Did you see this recent upload from me:
jim bell <jdb10987 at yahoo.com>To:CypherPunks
Nov 22 at 11:54 PM
Judge Says The FBI Can't Keep Refusing To Confirm Or Deny The Existence Of Social Media Monitoring Documents
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Judge Says The FBI Can't Keep Refusing To Confirm Or Deny The Existence ...
The ACLU is one step closer to obtaining documents detailing the FBI's use of social media monitoring tools. The...
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How will this affect FOIA applications on Cypherpunks data?----------------------------
That is a case out of the Northern District of California. United States District Court for the Northern District of California
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United States District Court for the Northern District of California
The United States District Court for the Northern District of California (in case citations, N.D. Cal.) is the ...
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I haven't read it in detail yet. It deals with monitoring "social media". While the term "social media" didn't exist in 1995, it is likely that the Cypherpunks email list is close enough to that to qualify. To take advantage of that, we could find somebody in that judicial district who is willing to file a FOIA there.
I will respond further to your email soon, probably by tomorrow morning.
Jim Bell
On Saturday, November 23, 2019, 07:06:44 PM PST, Douglas Lucas <dal at riseup.net> wrote:
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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