From: She Devil With A Modem <redsonja@liii.com>
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 09:44:45 +0800
To: sunder@brainlink.com (Ray Arachelian)
Subject: Re: FCPUNX:Are we men or mice?  Re: House panel votes behind closed doors to build in Big Brother
In-Reply-To: <199709130050.UAA29850@beast.brainlink.com>
Message-ID: <199709130132.VAA13357@rowan.liii.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Also Sprach Ray Arachelian:
> 
> On Fri, 12 Sep 1997, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> 
> > We have a goddamn right to use encryption without a government backdoor.
 
It is not just a right, it is very nearly almost a law of NATURE. Not
just a creation of logic, but a certainty that cannot be compensated for
or guarded against. 
 
> Frankly among certain crowds many backdoors and other bugs have been
> detected in most OS's, how will the mother fuckers keep them from being
> found and used?  I mean, all you have to do is simply get their attention
> and have them snoop on you, meanwhile you watch all the packets and record
> the weird ones and you've got a copy of their session.

Don't get distracted by wasting too much time in inappropriate places.
My definition of "inappropriate places" being "places that do not yield 
enough information perceived as useful". 

The people who are viewed as the "enemy" here have a hell of a lot more
experience judging the value of information as a weapon. (Not that this
should be discouraging, just taken into consideration.) The weapon can
and does become useless, especially if it concerns personal information,
if the person involved has the emotional strength to be able to resist
emotional blackmail. 

An enormous victory can be won by the STRONG, who are capable of 
withstanding personal attack in this regard and causing the enemy to
waste enormous amounts of their time trying to accomplish impossible
goals of erosion on individual self esteem. 

If you believe that this is mere paranoia, I urge you to make a serious
examination of the circumstances of Alan Turing's death. As cypherpunks,
you should all be interested enough to do so. His death and the shady
circumstance surrounding it are a thing to be learned from.

> After the evil laws, our jobs will be to break ALL GAK'ed software.  How
> will they prevent that?  Passing more laws to make the exposure of bugs
> and holes illegal?  Sort of like the cell scanner laws? :)

There is a certain amount of quality control that the cypherpunks are
doing for the intelligence agencies, and those same are perfectly 
willing to allow you to continue to do that...for now. Nor is it any
coincidence that (I'm sure) some of you have been approached by said
places with terms of employment and/or indoctrination.

And of course this publicly available list is well populated with
people who are perfectly willing to spam it with controversial and
time-wasting rhetoric, designed to make those of you who are good at
coding angry enough to waste your time denouncing their "chaff" instead. 

You are not dealing with either stupid or moral people when it comes
to TLAs. Remember this, please. Once I believed in this country enough
to die for it, I believed their propaganda and their lies. That was 
before I got a good eyeful of the incompetence, cruel lack of concern 
for human lives, the obsession with power and the selfish greed that
permeates the American military; the unnamed "fourth branch" of our 
government; the sort of people who would allow a five BILLION dollar
facility in Maryland to be built for their pleasure while people in
New York and Los Angeles and Austin and Chicago - CITIES IN THE SAME
COUNTRY THEY HAVE SUPPOSEDLY SWORN TO DEFEND - are dying of starvation,
drug addiction, poor medical care, and the odd police brutality incident!

I ask, no, I BEG you now, those of you who have the power to fight this:
retain your individualistic morals and let no one subvert them by any 
means, because they are TRULY what our country was founded upon! I still
believe in those ideals, yes - in SPITE of my exposure to the pack of
misguided, selfish, greedy sons of bitches who have managed after two
hundred years to turn it into a travesty of what it once was, and what
it once meant to me.

Don't let them jam you with their chaff! Ignore the bullshit and THINK!
It's the LAST thing THEY want you to do!

-- 
"It was sweet to hear of the Pathfinder      | Do not           CD  c
 engineer's bumper sticker: 'My other        | taunt --------P===\==/
 vehicle is on Mars!'" -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, | happy fun         /_\__
                        Unix Review Oct 1997 | fencer!             _\ \