Re: Cypherpunks State of Emergency

(snip)
> I think it's apparent that the events of Friday, with the other shoe to
> drop on Monday (the H-P/Intel/Microsoft/etc. Final Capitulation), signal to
> us that we are in a State of Emergency.
> 
> The Presidents of this country are in the habit of declaring such States of
> Emergency, often essentially secretly (in that the sheeple know little of
> such things, and those who speak of NSDDs and PDDs and EOs are demonized by
> the media as "conspiracy nuts" and "militia members").
> 
> Maybe it's time for us to stop flaming about Vulis and his allies, and
> concentrate on the Real War.
(snip)

I have to agree.  One of the most impressive things I have seen as a 
modern "movement" (yes I realize cpunks are not an organized 
movement, relax) was the massive public relations job done by several 
core cpunks around the 1993 Clipper proposal.  People with largely 
divergent opinions found public ground in their opposition to 
Clipper.  Lets do that again.

One thing that will help is spreading the use of filtering.  Those 
interested in learning how to filter should be able to ask any of us 
and we should all respond ASAP.  The Noise is horrible in here, but I 
only hear it in my trash folder.

[BTW, Tim, thanks for being willing to withstand the crap you go 
through.  You, and others on this list, have consistantly challenged 
and changed my assumptions about society, law and privacy.  I dont 
always agree with you.  But I am glad you are here.]

Matt Miszewski

> "The government announcement is disastrous," said Jim Bidzos,.."We warned IBM
> that the National Security Agency would try to twist their technology."
> [NYT, 1996-10-02]
> We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
> ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
> Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
> tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
> W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
> Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments.
> "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

At 11:58 AM +0000 11/20/96, Matthew J. Miszewski wrote:

>I have to agree.  One of the most impressive things I have seen as a
>modern "movement" (yes I realize cpunks are not an organized
>movement, relax) was the massive public relations job done by several
>core cpunks around the 1993 Clipper proposal.  People with largely
>divergent opinions found public ground in their opposition to
>Clipper.  Lets do that again.

Thanks, but I think the opposition to Clipper was very widespread, and
didn't nucleate around our group. (It is true that the "Wired" cover story
hit at the right time, and that 1993 was when a lot of journalists
"discovered" crypto, but it is also likely that this discovery would have
happened anyway, for lots of reasons.)

>[BTW, Tim, thanks for being willing to withstand the crap you go
>through.  You, and others on this list, have consistantly challenged
>and changed my assumptions about society, law and privacy.  I dont
>always agree with you.  But I am glad you are here.]

The messages denouncing me--or Gillmore, or Hughes, or whomever--are easy
to delete and/or filter. It is really the _list_ that is being affected,
not so much _me_. And I long ago gave up on any conceit that I could
control what others did to disrupt the list or did to cheapen the debate.
All I can influence is what I write in my essays, and I have tried to start
new threads on topics of interest to me.

Some call it being phlegmatic (look it up---unlike the word, "gullible,"
this one is actually in the dictionary). Nietzsche called it "amor
fati"--love of one's fate. Muslims and Buddhists put it in slightly
different ways. Whatever, the key is to transcend monkey troop anguish and
resentment over bad things said by others.

For the list's sake, I dislike the childlike rants of Vulis, Aga (Grubor),
Stathis, and others, just as I dislike the list-undermining megabytes of
rants a few years ago by Larry Dettweiler and his various pseudonyms. But I
can't stop them. So, I just filter them as best I can and get on with life.
If some newbies are "taken in" by their rantings, that's life. It ain't
always fair, and I can't worry too much that some newbie or some twit is
convinced by such rants. Nor can I worry that some people think I must be
guilty because I don't rant back at Vulis, Aga, Stathis, etc. (well, I try
not to rant back...sometimes I make some comments, as I'm doing here).

Not speaking for John Gillmore, but if someone is taken in by Aga's rants
about Gillmore being a "BAD FAGGOT, worthy of death," then I think of it as
evolution in action. Plonk.

--Tim May

"The government announcement is disastrous," said Jim Bidzos,.."We warned IBM
that the National Security Agency would try to twist their technology."
[NYT, 1996-10-02]
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."