From: qwerty@netcom.com (Xenon)
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 94 13:55:39 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Detweiler remailer abuse
Message-ID: <199402152145.NAA06598@mail.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


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To lefty,

(Skip to end for remailer discussion).

 -----BEGIN POINTLESS FLAME BLOCK-----

When a control freak has zero to actually say, yet has been infuriated, he
turns to personal attack. If I am infuriating the control freaks, then I am
doing my job admirably.

>I suggest a short chat with Mr. Dictionary to determine the actual
>definition of the word "censorship".  In the immortal words of Inigo
>Montoya, "You keep saying that, but I don't think it means what you seem
>to believe it does."

Which dictionary do you own? I personally own THREE 4 inch thick
dictionaries, all modern. They cost me hundreds. I have a wooden stand to
hold them up. As I am at lab, I do not have them available however and will
have to go to the library....

I'm back.

Censor: A supervisor or inspector especially of morals and conduct. An
official empowered to examine written or printed matter (as manuscripts of
books or plays) in order to forbid publication, circulation, or
representation if it contains anything objectionable. An officer or
official charged with scrutinizing communications to intercept, suppress,
or delete material harmful to his country's or organization's interests.
One who lacking official sanction but acting in society's interests
scrutinizes communications, compositions, and entertainments to discover
anything immoral, profane, seditious, heretical or otherwise offensive.
Examine, cut out, parts of (a book, etc.); act as a censor.

>>And after all, he wasn't the one who wrote that "Blacknet" blurb.

>Was there a point to this statement?

Yes.

>Do you believe that drunk drivers should not be held responsible for their
actions because they don't build their own cars?

No.

>Please feel entirely free to avoid using the old one while you wait
>patiently for the new and perfect one to show up.  I suggest you avoid
>posting any further until you have _real_ _encryption_ running in your
>laptop and _optical_ _fiber_ connecting you to all the places with which
>you might consider communicating.

This is good advice to anyone interested in maintaining privacy in a public
forum.

>>I can't take the IDEAL of the First Amendment lightly
>>enough to do so either.

>OK, I see we can add the First Amendment to the list of subjects on which
>you are essentially totally ignorant.  When you finish with Mr.
>Dictionary, you might try puzzling out Mr. Bill of Rights.  _It_ doesn't say
>what you apparently think it does, either.

Ideal: A conception of something in it's absolute perfection. An honorable
or worthy principle or aim.

First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

I find it unfortunate that those who wrote the Bill of Rights limited its
scope, to not apply also to industry and other organizations. And it is
people who nit-pick the wording of the Constitution and its amendments who
are turning the USA into a repressive state. Burn baby, burn.

>Not nearly as amusing as _I_ find it to see know-nothing children
>attempting to impress the big kids with their general level of
>uninformedness.

Part of the problem with this command-line interface we are using is that
you can't see me, and thus you can't know me, for who I am as a person.
Flaming one another isn't what we need. If you feel someone misunderstands
something that you understand better, educate them. But realize that most
cases of one person becoming infuriated at another stem from
misunderstanding, a failure to communicate. So tell my why I should censor
Larry 'cause I don't see why I should. It's a lost cause. He will simply
aquire other accounts, or telnet to port 25 of a remailer and fake his
address, but this time with greater ambition to do damage.

The "know-nothing children attempting to impress the big kids with their
general level of (sic) uninformedness" who wrote that Blacknet thing should
think again about getting their thrills out of illegal activity, real or
imagined. You wouldn't have this Detweiler problem if you called yourself
"libertarians" instead of "Cypherpunks". You would increase you level of
support by orders of magnitude as well.

 -----END POINTLESS FLAME BLOCK-----

This following was my response to a discussion in e-mail. I expressed that
I think the MEANS suggested to me to censor Detweiler would so more
harm than good. It was pointed out to me that at least it would make it
less convenient for him to abuse the remailers....

>And that extra work will anger him and fill him with the unfortunate
>drive to do more damage, since in his mind our trying to fight him
>means he has to try so much harder to point out to us whatever the hell
>he is trying to point out.
 
>Julf cutting off someone's account isn't effective either for someone
>like Detweiler. I myself found out that I could telnet to anon.penet.fi
>port 25 and simply fake my incoming address, and thus gain access to as
>many new anon.penet.fi addresses as I wanted.
 
>Again, I wish we could get a net modeled on the postal service, in
>which there WAS NO "From: qwerty-remailer@netcom.com" in the headers.
 
>The day someone posts kiddie porn via qwerty is the day I tell Netcom and
>the police that I am running  remailer, and that I will shut it down to
>avoid this again, but that if they want to know who posted it they need
>to look at Netcom's sendmail logs, and follow them to the next remailer.
>And to avoid Detweiler becoming angry enough to post kiddie porn via
>qwerty, I wish not to try to block him in ineffective ways.
 
>What we need is an abuse filter, not a Detweiler filter, because he
>can always post kiddie porn under another name. And honestly, I dont'
>think he would ever post kiddie porn, or carry out any serious illegal
>abuses. He could however make his point a lot clearer were he to
>state it up front. His pranks do serve to warn us about possible
>REAL abuses.

And I wrote this, when told that Larry wasn't a responsible
net.citizen, doesn't deserve to be treated as such:

>I agree, but I'm not sure if the means suggested to me are going to
>be effective. He will just aquire other accounts, or telnet to post
>25 of a remailer, to get through, and this time with more passion
>about doing real harm. Fight him and he'll fight back, with greater
>ambition. I don't know the real answer. And are those who wrote that
>Blacknet thing "responsible net.citizens"? If anyone should have been
>censored, it was he who starting sending those things out in the first
>place.
 
>And I spoke of the "IDEAL" of the first amendment, which to me means
>stopping someone from using a PUBLIC forum, normally available to all,
>from expressing his views. If his Blacknet posts via Hal's remailer
>be called performance art, and in a way they CAN, then I cannot YET
>bring myself to censor them. And indeed part of the problem is that I
>do NOT yet understand well enough about the internet, Blacknet,
>Cypherpunks, and Detweiler to be confident that I'd be doing the right
>thing.

 -=Xenon=-

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