From: TruthMonger <tm@dev.null>
Date: Tue, 2 Dec 1997 22:14:47 +0800
To: stewarts@ix.netcom.com
Subject: Bill Stewart kills babies after he molests them. Honest! / Re: Pasting in From:
In-Reply-To: <v03102802b0a801cade82@[206.170.115.5]>
Message-ID: <348410EB.55FB@dev.null>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



stewarts@ix.netcom.com wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP FORGED MESSAGE-----
> >On Sun, 30 Nov 1997, Lance Cottrell wrote:
> >> [Spam baiting, forged mailing list subscriptions]

> The hard problem is
> >> Forged postings with deplorable content will bring down retribution
> >> on the forgery victim.
 
> I shut down my remailer a few years ago because of this one;
> the forger posted hate mail to the gay newsgroups with the victim's name
> at the bottom (didn't even use From: pasting, just message body.)
> Supporting From: pasting just encourages this.

  So what's the problem? Has everyone forgotten how to use their
delete key? Does nobody have anything better to do with their time
and resources than to waste them being offended by people who are
trying to offend them?
  It never fails to amaze me that complainers point out that an
'abusive' letter started out, "I hate niggersfaggotsjewsyou!"
and then proceed to list the other fifty 'abusive' things that
the writer had to say. Do these people correct the spelling as
they are reading the 'abusive' messages?

> Besides Usenet, other popular tactics for retribution are
> sending death threats to politicians, sending child pornography
> to mailing lists, forging messages _from_ politicians, etc.
> Disclaimer/warning headers help, but can't stop it all.

  Laissez-faire...
  I have never been very enamored of becoming a babysitter to the
whole fucking world in the enterprises I enter into. I set up an
anonymous remailer system for a mental health group and the first
time they claimed that someone was 'abusing' it, I told them,
"You're all fucking crazy! What the fuck do you expect? That's
why you have the list in the first place."
  I can't believe the lame fucks who complain about politically
incorrect anarchists on the CypherPunks list, or who suggest that
list members who may or may not hate niggersfaggotsjewsyou somehow
reflect well or badly on the CypherPunk Nation/Flag/Cause.
  Got a problem with my politics? I wear a grey blazer. You can 
a different colored blazer, so my posts don't reflect badly on
you.

  Identity/source forgery is not usually a major problem in itself,
but becomes one because of the people who buy into the game being 
played because they can't fuck up their boss without getting fired,
so they're waiting for someone to 'give them a reason...'
  I followed an anti-spam list full of dweebs who had no idea how
to tell a good header from a badly forged header, and they would
spam god-and-everybody, en mass, like a blind lynch mob. It was
hilarious to watch.

  I can make my own Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com> signature
and inundate the InterNet with "I like to kill babies after I molest
them (signed) posts." Although it would undoubtedly be a pain in the
ass for you, it would also result in the education of a lot of
complainers as to the principles of identity and digital signitures,
albeit at the expense of your time and resources.
  I can also do the same with the perceived net identities of other
people, including politicians and random strangers. And so can anyone
else. So what? It's part of life. We can route around the damage, or
we can make it a felony punishible by death, or we can give up our
job, family and hobbies in order to spend the rest of our life 
crusading against the 'wrong' that has been done to us.

  There seem to be an increasing number of people who are crying
out for elephant-gun solutions to fly-swatter problems.
  During the censorship experiment, my nephew and his friends were
reading some of the grand schemes proposed for dealing with the
spam/flames/etc on the list. (Everyone must wear an aluminum foil
hat and generate hash-cash e-postage to be sent to a Mars base
station for conversion to an exchange medium based on their hair
color and weight...) He looked at me, mystified, and said, "Don't
these guys have <Delete> keys?"

  There are always going to be people who read the disclaimers
and warnings on anonymously sent email and still harass our good
pal, <president@whitehouse.gov> because 'he' sent them a message
saying, "I dare you to spam me, asshole!"
  One of the little known secrets of the universe is that a great
many problems can be 'solved' by simply ignoring them, or by using
common sense.
"Doctor, it hurts when I do _this_."
  "Don't _do_ that."

GrayMonger