From: anonymous@extropia.wimsey.com
Date: Sat, 14 May 94 23:13:12 PDT
To: talk.politics.guns.usenet@decwrl.dec.com
Subject: [ANON] War in rec.guns
Message-ID: <199405150551.AA13213@xtropia>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


<<Cross-posted because rec.guns moderator is killing pro-anon posts>>

 ||To: gun-control@cs.umd.edu

 -=> Quoting Stan Young to All <=-

 SY> This is a public forum.  It is a place for standing up and being
 SY> counted. If you haven't posted here before, and you don't wish to be
 SY> "known" as someone with interests in this area, don't post - period. 

Ah, "The John Wayne Syndrome" again!  Re-check my posts for my comments.
In any case, you are imposing your value judgment on someone else's
purely personal decision, which of course is out of line.  In any case,
how do you know a "real" account is indeed "real"?  You don't, and
you can't.

 SY> Those who think that an "anonymous" posting site provides any
 SY> protection at all are, sadly, seriously in error.  Note that your name
 SY> is still  available "before" the post gets to the "anonymous" site -
 SY> and anyone sufficiently motivated to collect the data will be able to
 SY> trace it back to you.

Completely and totally untrue!  My "technical ignorance" point again...

Before embarrassing yourself by making such statements, you should
educate yourself about current anon remailer tech.  What you say is only
true for the first-generation trivial remailers such as Penet's, used
for trivial anonymity.

The current chained, encrypted Cypherpunks remailers are, as far as can
be determined, absolutely unbreakable except _possibly_ (and only
theoretically) by a high intensity, highly expensive attack by the NSA
or by an internal physical security breach.  These are complicated and
sophisticated programs.  If you think you can defeat them, there are
lots of folks who would love for you to try.  There is no evidence that
anyone has, and there have been notable cases where Law Enforcement has
tried to break the tech and failed (Followup to cypherpunks@toad.com).

 SY> If you have secrets you want to keep, the best way to do it is to keep
 SY> your mouth shut, your profile low, and your fingers off the keyboard.

Frankly, if anyone should shut up, it'd be the people who don't know
what they're talking about...but that would cut down the traffic in
rec.guns to about six posts a day, I suppose.

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<Later in the day, I received a message from "Magnum" and replied:>

 -=> Quoting Magnum@cs.umd.edu to John Nieder <=-

 Ma> You are responding to Stan Young, and so I'm forwarding your post to
 Ma> him since I have chosen to reject your post for the whole group.

You also, I note, have not been passing on numerous other dissenting
messages of which I have received Cc:s.

This is an excellent way to engineer the illusion of common consent,
however dishonestly.  I congratulate you.  Unfortunately, you do not
have control of the other lists and newsgroups on which I plan to
discuss this issue and your personal handling of it.

 Ma> The issue has been aired and closed, however, and
 Ma> therefore I see no basis for sending your contempt *for* the group *to*
 Ma> the group.  I think we all pretty much figured this out how you feel
 Ma> from the last posts anyway. 

How do you expect me to feel?  No one - including you - has answered a
single goddam point I made, refuted a claim, or otherwise gave anything
faintly resembling an intelligent response.  All I have received is a
bunch of Cc:s supporting my position, which do not show up on the group,
and a few snitty and illiterate pokes from folks who don't like to have
their ignorance and prejudice pointed out, and who can't deal with the
actual issues.

If I'm wrong on this position, show me _why_, don't play chickenshit
games with incoming posts to fake a consensus and pretend like I never
said anything serious to begin with.

That's just contemptable, especially coming from someone so heavily
invested in "open" discussion.  "Sunlight" or something, wasn't it?

Think about it.  In the meantime check the following post.  The original
respondent had the intellectual integrity to admit that my points were
valid, but was shook up because I had dared rock the boat by being
angry:
=======================================================================
  Msg#: 2  Pvt                          Date: 13 May 94  00:11:15
  From: John Nieder                                  
    To: Rt@hpbs2852.boi.hp.com                       
  Subj: Re: [ANON]: Yes or Goodby

 -=> Quoting Rt@hpbs2852.boi.hp.com to John Nieder <=-

 Rt> Anyway, when I'm as angry about something as you obviously were
 Rt> when you wrote this, I have difficulty realizing how I sound.  I'm just
 Rt> letting you know the taste your post left in other people's mouths, in
 Rt> case you were interested.

The only things that matter are the points I made.  If you can refute
them - if what I asserted is inaccurate - you have a case, otherwise
save the bandwidth, no offense intended.  I meant for the post to sound
exactly the way it did.  I edited it three times and a fourth for
cross-posting.

My netmail on this is running about 85% toward enthusiastic agreement,
by the way.  Of the detractors posting the remaining, dissenting notes,
you are the _only_ one who could post two consecutive grammatical
sentences.  NONE, however, disputed a single point I made in my post.
Not _one_, thus nicely proving my hypothesis about anti-anon posters
being more interested in personality and conflict than the issues they
are obviously unequipped to discuss.

Let's face it, there are some prime idiots on these lists and newsgroups
who exhibit exactly the same irrational, uninformed, buttheaded bigotry in
their attitudes toward the privacy movement (and God knows what else)
that Diane Feinstein shows toward guns.  These days I'm getting fed up
with being steamrollered by small people with little piss-pots of
authority who don't know what the hell they're talking about.  I'm sick
of being expected to _like it_ and respond politely as though I'm
dealing with decent, thinking human beings.  I've _had_ it, Bro.

My take is that if the shoe fits, they can fucking well wear it.

        JN

... Truth exists independently of ideological imperatives.