My Views on the Detweiler Matter

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

Cypherpunks, 

I. too, am weary of this thread...paranoia, death threats,
"pseudospoofing," Satan's spawn, tentacles of Medusa, and on and on. I
apologize for the length of this piece, which has reached detweilerian
proportions, but I need to make some points. Sorry if many of you are fed
up with this thread. I've tried to avoid comment, but I've been getting
several rants every day from Detweiler, either posted to the List or in
private e-mail (and the rants he sends to Eric Hughes and myself are even
more tortured, as he rambles on and begs us to stop tormenting him, to call
off our devils who are attacking him, then goes back to threats and
insults....very sad). 

Several people have suggested we "lay off Detweiler," that he is clearly in
pain and is disturbed in various ways. I agree, but getting several
messages a day from him, filled with threats, taunts, insults, and
religious paranoia tends to make this "laying-off" a bit more problematic.
Especially when his posts prompt others on this List to try to defend his
points. There is always the danger that repeating the Big Lie often enough
will cause it to be accepted as the truth. In this case, apparently some
are now beginning to believe that the List is in fact controlled by a cabal
of plotters and that pseudospoofing is the tool they use to control the
mood and agenda of the List. Utter nonsense.

He has recently claimed we are a bunch of Ted Bundy's, plotting the murder
of young women, that we are spawn of Satan, trying to pull society into the
depths of Hell, that we are High Traitors which the government (his
newfound ally) must suppress, and that the High Cabal is beaming radio
waves into his brain to control his thoughts (only this last item is made
up...a taste of what is to come in the next few weeks, I suspect).

I consider the whole situation very sad, and even tragic. Lance Dettweiler
did some nice work on the "Privacy and Anonymity on the Internet FAQ."
Ironically, he now considers my helpful comments on these matters (I recall
encouraging him to go ahead and write a FAQ on these matters, sometime last
winter or so, so I may have been a prime motivator of his FAQ) to be some
kind of evil trickery designed to do whatever it is he thinks is now being
done to him.

Be that as it may, his recent points require a response from me. And the
whole Detweiler matter actually _does_ have some important connections to
the Cypherpunks area of interest, so the topic is not as off-base as some
might think. Certainly it's closer to our main themes than many of the
recent debates about subliminal advertising and using thermite bombs to
destroy safes are, to name but two topics.

Back to the Detweiler situation.

I tried to laugh it off, as my posts of last week or so showed--the one
declaring there to be only four or five actually unique individuals on the
List, with each of us using dozens of pseudonyms. Little did I suspect that
Detweiler would use my joke about the "Wired" photo using hired actors as
"proof" of our duplicity, Jeesh, that man needs a humor transplant!

His alter ego S. Boxx is still making death threats, as he himself is, and
is claiming the "evidence is being collected" for some some sort of formal
charges. Right. (That Detweiler = S. Boxx is beyond doubt. Personal mail
sent by Eric Hughes and myself to Detweiler showed up in the rants of S.
Boxx, and the styles are nearly identical. Detweiler has rather
transparently claimed that S. Boxx is "in communication" with him. Right.)

Anyway, while I have been mostly just shrugging-off Detweiler's fantastical
rants, saving them in my "Detweiler file," some of you are talking about
how Detweiler may be ranting, but how he's basically *right* about some
things. Some of you are apparently coming to believe that in fact a High
Cabal exists to purge Detweiler and to use pseudospoofing to undermine him
in public. Now I of course I can see validity in essays separate from the
underlying mental sanity of the writer (think of Nietzsche), so I don't
automatically dismiss LD's points just on the basis of his paranoid style. 

But he has presented no evidence for his assertions. I just think he's gone
off the deep end with his paranoia about the number of pseudonyms on the
List. I know for a fact that I write my stuff under my own name, that I am
not any of the more colorful "nyms" on the List....I am not "Deadbeat," "S.
Boxx," "Murdering Thug," or "Panzer Boy." (Actually, some of these may just
be BBS handles....I'm not paying too much attention to the distinction, as
I really don't care overmuch about the "actual" name of folks I haven't
met.)

To be sure, some people are using nyms, as they have for as long as the Net
has existed...and for much longer, of course. Pen names, pseudonyms,
whatever. But this is a much different thing than saying the List is
dominated by pseudonyms, by clever false identities, by Satan-inspired
demons who are adopting false identities specifically to torment good
Christians like Lance Detweiler.

His modus operandi seems to be to repeat his points over and over again and
to to accuse others of Satanic or cabalistic motivations--usually in his
inimitably florid prose style--and to claim that the "debate" is being
skewed by dozens of phony identities. If Hal Finney is not 100% behind his
latest idea, well, then obviously Hal is One of Them, a tentacle of the
Medusa, a Nym from Hell that is bent on making LD a laughingstock on the
List. 

In several cases, when Detweiler made some point and others didn't agree
with him or actions weren't taken to his liking, he simply stamped his feet
and used such effective debating tactics as "I am getting nauseatingly
disgusted and TOTALLY angered by the completely traitorous and
spectacularly cunning vipers who..." (Lance never met an adverb or
adjective he didn't like. Neither did S. Boxx.)

(When he was still soliciting my occasional advice in e-mail, which I
sometimes gave, I urged him to not try to win arguments merely by repeating
his points over and over again and then announcing what his _mental state_
was. His points would have to stand or fall on their own merits, not on his
claims that he was going to hold his breath 'til he turned blue. "Blue
Nyms"?)


THE FACTS

There's been a lot of innuendo that "pseudospoofing" is going on. Not just
anonymous mail sent to Detweiler--something I can't speak to, not having
sent him any and not having access to his incoming mail--but the use of
pseudonyms like Jamie Dinkelacker, Nick Szabo, and (as of last night,
apparently, according to Detweiler) Hal Finney to shape and slant
arguments. Detweiler has argued that these pseudospoofers are criticizing
his points and generally interfering with the democracy that would, he
thinks, otherwise produce the proper decisions. Namely, his decisions.

I've seen no situation where a "vote" of posters was taken, where these
alleged pseudospoofers shaped an outcome. In fact, the Cypherpunks list is
largely a "market anarchy," with very few real decisions *ever* being
made...the several dozen active posters say their points, announce their
projects and their progress on same, and generally follow the "coffee shop"
model someone (sorry) eloquently described a week or so ago.

Positive reputations matter. I've never met Doug Barnes or Karl Barrus
before, and they may even be pseudonyms. But I value their comments,
regardless. Even some of the recent obvious nyms, like "Sam Hill," I'm
valuing more and more. To each their own. Use filters if you don't like
nyms.


I know for a fact that I haven't been sending Detweiler anonymous mail. And
not much mail at all, in fact. About 5 or 6 weeks ago, after he went
ballistic and called me a "traitor" and a "lackey of Eric Hughes" over my
relatively mild defense of the EFF/Shari Steele advisory, I told him in
e-mail I would no longer correspond with him. (My message to him was later
quoted in its entirety in one of his rants.) Frankly, I was tired of his
hot-and-cold mood swings, with death threats and floridly-written insults
interspersed with requests for help in some area (pretty nervy!)....I just
got fed up with his obvious lack of social skills and his descent into
paranoid schizophrenia. He is, as a former girlfriend would diagnose his
condition, a "borderline personality."

I've used remailers, though never for mail to him.

Detweiler made a big thing about my open admission to him that I have in
fact used anonymous mailers at times to post to the List. This is hardly a
surprising announcement, as nearly all of you should know that in several
instances I have used remailers to make a point, to demonstrate some
capability. The three main examples that come to mind are:

1. "Information Liberation Front" (ILF). To illustrate the possibilities,
and to also post some articles I had scanned, I began using this "nym"
about a year ago. Others have since used it as well (anyone can...no sigs
are involved), as I hoped. In no cases can you find the "ILF" doing the
kind of "pseuodospoofing" Detweiler rails about.

2. The "A Patriot" (I think that was the name I used) posting supposedly
blowing the whistle on F-117 Nighthawk (Stealth) fighter cost overruns. I
posted material anonymously, got a bunch of "you are a traitor" messages
(not from Detweiler, that I can recall), and then several days later I
announced that I was the author and that the material came from widely
available public articles. My point was not to make people look like
fools--though at least one person did--but to provide a "trial run" for the
Real Thing, when actual defense secrets get out on whistleblowers-type
networks. It's gonna happen, and we need to think about this in advance.

(This posting was made about 6 months ago, and it was hardly a secret that
I was the author.)

3. "BlackNet." Ironically, someone else took my announcement of this from
somewhere--perhaps from a nanotech meeting, where I used it to illustrate
the difficulties in controlling nanotech developments--and forwarded it
through a remailer to the Cypherpunks list. But I was of course the author.
I've been using "BlackNet" as my generic example of a crypto-anarchic
entity since late 1987, as I have already explained in an earlier posting.

(The recent announcement that a Van Eyck radiation kit is available via a
BlackNet-style "cutout" was not my doing, I hasten to add. I welcome such
developments, though I doubt this one is completely serious.)

In these three cases, which are my *only* uses of anonymity/pseudonyms that
I can recall (I won't say there's never been another example, but I
honestly can't recollect any other uses....), these were essentially "open
secrets." I discussed all of them either on the List (as with the F-117 and
BlackNet material) or it was a standing joke amongst physical meeting
attendees that I was behind the ILF. 

I am not any of the pseudonyms you see on the List regularly. I guess I
have too much ego and too little to fear (being retired, I have no fears
about my "reputation" as a crypto-anarchist hurting me) to hide my views
under a pseudonym.

Enough on this, though.

Robert Woodhead made some comments in Detweiler's behalf, and was promptly
flamed for it, referred to as "another snake" or somesuch. Here are my
comments on Robert's points:

He writes:

>Personally, I am getting a little tired of your ranting.  I agreed with
>most of your position and got flamed for it.  Thanks a lot.  It's chillingly
>obvious you've read "How to Win Friends and Influence People."
>
>If you are willing to do the research and provide solid, verifyable
>evidence of such nastiness as you are convinced is happening, then
>do it.  If you are willing to discuss the implications of dishonesty
>in a universe of anonymity, then  that is a topic of interest.  If
>all you are willing to do is rant about the boogieman under the
>bed, then please do your mumbling somewhere else in cyberspace.
>
>I _still_ think the issue that concerns you is an important one.  I
>also think you are doing a very good job of ensuring that people
>don't give it critical thought. 

Robert, 

Something you might want to think about is this:

* I have never sent Detweiler--or S, Boxx, either--a message anonymously or
pseudoanonymously. That is, *all* mail I have sent him (and that hasn't
been much) has been from my one and only e-mail account, tcmay@netcom.com.

(Obviously not counting any of the anonymous mail that appeared on the List
as a whole, the aforementioned ILF, F-117, and BlackNet material.)

* Somehow he became deluded--and that is literally his condition--that
other List members, such as Jamie Dinkelacker and Nick Szabo--were
pseudonyms of *me*. He ranted at me in e-mail, interspersed with "you sly
devil!" congratulations for pulling off such a feat. He claimed I wrote the
short story, "Master Key" (about 4-6 weeks ago), which I did not....I don't
know who did. The political essays which have appeared under pseudonyms
were definitely *not* written by me...some of them I'd like to claim credit
for, but I just can't. 

* After many of these strange messages, I broke my silence with him and
sent him a message setting him straight: that I was not Jamie or Nick, that
I had not sent him any messages, and that I did not write any of the
anonymous pieces he claimed I had. (Detweiler called me a liar for
disavowing to him in e-mail that I had written these. He just won't take no
for an answer. Denials are taken as further proof of a Grand Conspiracy to
Confuse Him.)

* This knocked him further over the edge, and he began sending me death
threats (along the charming lines of "traitors like you will be hung by the
neck until DEAD and then sent to HELL") and other weird messages.

* What more can be said? He has taken his personal demon, "pseudospoofing,"
and blown it out of proportion. When Hal Finney tried to help (a misguided
idea, in my opinion, as we are not psychotherapists), he is called another
"tentacle of the Medusa" and LD says he now realizes "Hal" is just a
pseudonym of his tormenters! When Phil Zimmermann gets fed up with LD's
paranoia, he is deemed to be part of the conspiracy! 

It seems tragicomic that Detweiler has now gone almost completely over to
the side long-expressed by David Sternlight (no, I am not making any
paranoid assertions) that law enforcement needs require restrictions on
anonymity tools, that registries of True Names and identities are needed,
and that the Cypherpunks goals are dangerous. He even mixes in
fundatmentalist religious paranoia, talking about Satan-inspired
Cypherpunks and "black poison" from the depths of Hell. 

One has to wonder how Detweiler could so demonize Dorothy Denning and David
Sternlight and now have so thoroughly taken an even more extreme position
on their side of the issues.

As someone said to me recently, Detweiler should be regarded as one of the
casualties.

It's sad.

--Tim May. whose identity is all-too-public and can be easily confirmed by
looking at photos in past issues of journals like "Transactions on Electron
Devices" (January, 1979, paper on "Alpha Particle-Induced Soft Errors in
Dynamic Memories") and so forth. I am also known to about 40-60 of you, by
my rough estimate. It's sad that Detweiler will not trust the evidence of
his senses, and contacts with others, and instead has plunged head-long
into paranoid schizophrenia.


--
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: by arrangement
Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.