Conspiracies and "Ciphergroupies"

At 5:57 PM 8/10/95, John Young wrote:
>   I respect the view that sound crypto requires skeptical
>   review and testing outside closed rooms. Conspiracies live
>   or die by the same process. Crypto would die if there was
>   no belief in conspiracies.
>
>   Conspiracy theory drives the cypherpunk agenda, I surmised
>   from the welcoming statement. Note the caution about "S1,"
>   and any other crypto offering.

I think a better, and less loaded, tern than "conspiracies" is "threat models."

It has always been important to many of us that the policies and plans of
potential threats be discussed, analyzed, etc. Thus, our recurring focus on
the activities of the NSA, GCHQ, FinCEN, and so on. For example, all folks
on this list should almost certainly read "The Puzzle Palace," even though
it does not _directly_ help with the latest project in writing code.

And like Orlin Grabbe, whose "End of Money" article I posted a pointer to
last winter, I closely follow the recent developments involving the
intelligence agencies, the plans to  limit crypto, etc.

(By the way, it was my close following of the NSA and related
organizations, and my monitoring of what Dorothy Denning was saying, that
led to my "A Trial Balloon to Ban Crypto?" article in this group and in
sci.crypt three years ago. This warning, which generated much discussion on
sci.crypt and here, prepared us for the Clipper announcement six months
later.)

Is this wasted time? Shouldn't I be using my time to write Trumpet
Winsocks--whatever they are!--for WinCypherHyperPhone?

Well, we all decide what our interests are, and exhortations by others that
we are not working on what is "really" important are not very useful. There
are probably a dozen different sorts of interests here, ranging from a
bunch of folks interested in popularizing crypto to several law professors
and lawyers interested in legal aspects to Internet programming experts.
Even some pure mathematicians. Even some novices.


>   Perry's sharp statements on the urgent need for crypto
>   deployment are motivated, it seems to me, by a view of a
>   believable, if not wholly proveable, threat that crypto is
>   believed to counter. I choose to believe him; Orlin's got my
>   skeptical interest -- put up or shut up -- and he's not out
>   of line.

Perry is Perry. He has certainly written his share of rants and "off-topic"
posts, as have we all. Literally thousands of his posts over the past 3
years reside on my disk drives, and certainly until recently most of them
were not about writing code.

Ironically, just a few weeks ago, Perry was sharply criticizing me for my
"Crisis Overload" post and was urging me to join him in a serious lobbying
effort to undermine the Grassley bill. I declined, thinking it unlikely to
succeed and preferring to concentrate on my other project (including a new
release of SmalltalkAgents, just arrived). When I preferred to work on more
technical things than launching a grassroots political campaign, he got
abusive and insulting in e-mail and I told him I would no longer accept
this sort of abuse. You may recall he chose to post this private message
here in public, without of course the messages that preceeded this (and
without my permission, needless to say).

Again, Perry is Perry.

People work on what interests them. It is nice for Perry, and maybe for all
of us if his efforts work out, that he has thrown himself into this new
programming project, but it is wrong for him to automatically dismiss the
interests and efforts of others.

There's also a certain "control freak" attitude that creeps into this list
(and other lists, of course) at times, wherein people say that their
current interest is vastly more important than anything else and that
anyone who does not drop their frivolous other interests and begin work
immediately on the One True Project are fools and knaves, and are probably
secretly working for the NSA! (:-}).

People should write about what interests them. Those who wish to program,
should program. Those who wish to explore number theory, should explore
number theory. And so on.

Attempting to control what gets posted on this list is pointless. If you
don't like a particular topic, or an author, use filters and kill files.
This can be done in many ways, including mail programs, procmail, and even
the "MailWeir" service that Harry Hawk offers. And many people dump the
list traffic into local newsgroups, allowing threadified reading. Also,
various digestified versions of the list exist--Eric Blossom has one.

Insulting people as "ciphergroupies" because they are not working on one's
current interest seems needlessly counterproductive.

Just my views. If you don't like 'em, ignore them or filter them. That's
the Cypherpunk way of doing things.

--Tim May


Special note: My ISP has changed its domain name from "sensemedia.net" to
"got.net" (as in "got milk?"), so I have to again ask you all to bear with
me and use my new e-mail address, "tcmay@got.net".
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May            | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net (Got net?)  | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-728-0152              | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Corralitos, CA            | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^756839    | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

This is only of interest to a very limited number of people. Its
basically a flame about private matters. I discourage reading it.

Timothy C. May writes:
> Ironically, just a few weeks ago, Perry was sharply criticizing me for my
> "Crisis Overload" post and was urging me to join him in a serious lobbying
> effort to undermine the Grassley bill.

You are rewriting history. I just asked you if you thought that hiring
a Washington lobbying firm would be a good idea. I didn't urge you to
join anything. I had no intention of involving any of us personally
in any lobbying on the basis that professionals would do it better.

> I declined,

Actually, you were noncommittal.

> thinking it unlikely to succeed and preferring to concentrate on my
> other project (including a new release of SmalltalkAgents, just
> arrived). When I preferred to work on more technical things than
> launching a grassroots political campaign, he got abusive and
> insulting in e-mail and I told him I would no longer accept this
> sort of abuse.

Actually Tim, this is again a rewrite of history. I was having a
perfectly pleasant email conversation with you (the first in a while)
when your tax situation came up and I advised you that you ought to
get some professional tax people to look at your finances. I won't
mention what the situation was since that was private, but if you
insist I'll happily post our exchange. You claimed I was being
"abusive" and went off in a huff. I don't recall urging you to do
anything other than seeing a professional tax attorney.

I just checked my archive of our private mail exchange on the subject,
and it appears that my recollection is substantially accurate. As I
noted, if you insist, I'll happily post the private mail.

As for your activities: frankly, Tim, I haven't known you to do much
of anything over the years. This is, of course, your right. You've
earned your money and you now get to do whatever you like. Don't
claim, however, that I said or did things that I did not say or do.

> Insulting people as "ciphergroupies" because they are not working on one's
> current interest seems needlessly counterproductive.

If you'd read my messages, I listed a wide array of productive
activities. Merely because I feel that polluting the list with
messages about Vincent Foster's shoe size is a waste doesn't mean that
I think everyone has to be a clone. There are dozens of valuable
activities from lobbying to coding to spreading the word that people
can do. However, posting conspiracy theories isn't in the list.

Perry

On Thu, 10 Aug 1995, Perry E. Metzger wrote:

> 
> This is only of interest to a very limited number of people. Its
> basically a flame about private matters. I discourage reading it.
> 

<mega-snip>

This disclaimer means nothing.  Gentlemen, this discussion is pointless.  
Please, on behalf of the little people, shut up already!

-=Kathleen M. Ellis=-

kelli@zeus.towson.edu                         http://zeus.towson.edu/~kelli/
Diverse Sexual Orientation Coll.Towson State University DSOC@zeus.towson.edu

Perry works too hard sometimes.
Tim writes kewl articles.
Mr. Young keeps us up tp date on the Times.
Wei Dei has RSA on his case, in unwarranted fashion.
Alex gets it all across the water.
Brad is hung up on Vince Foster.
Lucky Green needs his antique tin.
Futplex has a cool name, and hot pointers.
Joel lives in his own 'Private Idaho'.
Robert now "Pinesigns" everything.

And today My web counter showed that over 1,000 folks had now used
my web page to get PGP. This includes over 300 shipped 'across the
dreaded water zones'. (sound of 1 hand clapping!)

I write code....html, that is......
I do attempt to use it judiciously.

censored.org censors no one. Just quietly enters
things to the unread mail stack (now 11.3 megs)
for a rainy day.

Have a fun summer...fall is coming soon, and light
a candle for Jerry Garica today.

Love Always,

Carol Anne

Member Internet Society - Certified BETSI Programmer - WWW Page Creation
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carol Anne Braddock         <--now running linux 1.0.9 for your pleasure
carolann@censored.org             __  __     ____  ___       ___ ____
carolab@primenet.com             /__)/__) / / / / /_  /\  / /_    /
carolb@spring.com               /   / \  / / / / /__ /  \/ /___  /
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
A great place to start
My Cyber Doc...

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On Thu, 10 Aug 1995, Censored Girls Anonymous wrote:

> Robert now "Pinesigns" everything.

Yup, and it's encouraging a lot of other lay-people to investigate PGP 
and digital signatures. In the last week, I've gotten 200 or so hits on 
Pinesign and Tinsign from my homepage.  That's my purpose, get the word 
out, and it's working. :-)

> Have a fun summer...fall is coming soon, and light
> a candle for Jerry Garica today.

uh, a candle is the last thing I'd expect most people are lighting today 
in rememberance....

> Carol Anne Braddock         <--now running linux 1.0.9 for your pleasure

Upgrade, unsecure :-)

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____           Robert A. Hayden      <=> hayden@krypton.mankato.msus.edu
\  /__     Finger for Geek Code Info <=>    Finger for PGP Public Key
 \/  /           -=-=-=-=-=-                      -=-=-=-=-=-
   \/        http://krypton.mankato.msus.edu/~hayden/Welcome.html

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G++++>$ e++ h r-- y++**
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