J. Gilmore on Pseudospoofing

["L. Detweiler" <ld231782@longs.lance.colostate.edu>]

I appreciate Mr. Gilmore informing me of his opinion on pseudospoofing.
He does not specifically address the issue of whether he is personally
aware of any on the cypherpunks list, unfortunately.

Many people still don't get the pseudonymity vs. pseudanonymity.

>I think that your artificial distinction between "pseudonyms" and
>"pseudospoofing" is the root of where your thinking took a wrong turn.

clearly, a pseudonym on a book cover does not involve active lying.
more treacherous uses of pseudonyms, which I have described in detail, *do*.

there is a difference between `not being obligated to reveal who you
are' (anonymous or pseudonymous) and `lying about who you are' (pseudoanonymous).

but I see I have failed to convince you of that.

===cut=here===
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 93 02:31:26 -0800
From: gnu@toad.com
Subject: Re: RISKS15.25 
To: "L. Detweiler" <ld231782@longs.lance.colostate.edu>, gnu@toad.com

Hi...

I just took the time to read your rant in RISKS 15.25.

I think you're way off base on several counts.

  *  Electronic media are no different from paper media in making
     it possible to use multiple names.  Talk to Mark Twain, Dr.
     Seuss, Alice Cooper, Poor Richard, Paul French, or Franklin W.
     Dixon if you don't believe me.  My experience is that references
     among aliases in literary works are seen as `in-jokes', which only
     the truly educated (in that particular realm, like science
     fiction) can notice and chuckle over.

     It's legal to use multiple names as long as you don't use them to
     defraud people.

     I use multiple names daily.  Each magazine I subscribe to, or
     organization I belong to, knows me as "EE Gilmore" or "CPSR
     Gilmore".  Then when I get a mailing from some random
     place, I know which organization sold my name to them, and
     if the volume of trash becomes excessive, I can write to the
     offending organization to have my name removed.  My girlfriend
     didn't do this, and she now has a foot-deep stack of glossy catalogs
     that were mailed to her over the last month.  And she doesn't know
     how to stop them coming (and we don't have a woodstove :-).

  *  Your examples imply that some of the people on cypherpunks
     are using pseudonyms to deceive people:

> I have become aware of these serious abuses possible with pseudoanonymous
> posting from my long affiliation with the Cypherpunks, an allegiance I have
> now severed because of my realization of their basic hidden agenda in
> promoting the practice of pseudospoofing, or using pseudoanonymous identities
> in the aforementioned ways to manipulate and systematically deceive others in
> cyberspace.

      I think that you mistake an honest advocacy of the right to use
      multiple names, for an advocacy of deceit.  The main reason to
      use multiple names is so that your "enemies" cannot correlate
      your activities so that they can punish you in one part of your
      life for things they don't like in some other part.

      For example, if you are gay, you might use a pen name when writing
      for local gay publications, so your prejudiced employer won't fire you.
      If you drive a car, you might want to use a different name on your
      driver's license so that "smoke a joint, lose your license" laws
      will not find a record of your license if they catch you with a
      joint.  (There is no correlation between marijuana smoking and
      hazardous driving -- it's simply a punishment technique that happens
      to be considered legal because the "right to drive" is not a right
      guaranteed in any constitution nearby.)

      Another reason to use multiple names is to track what is being
      done with the name you supply, as in my example above.

David Chaum was the first person I noticed advocating the use of a
different pseudonym for transactions with each different organization.
(This was automatically done by a smart-card in his design.)  Is he
part of the evil conspiracy too, or does he have a point worth
hearing?  How would *you* turn back the trend toward having every bit
of information about each person accessible to anyone who knows their
name, date of birth, fingerprint, license number, license plate,
vehicle ID number, passport number, genotype, bank account number,
retina print, credit card number, photo, or social security number?
Or do you think that this is a *good* thing?

I'm not sure why you trust _me_ in this, actually, if you think that
Tim May and Eric Hughes are fake people or possibly the same person.

I think that your artificial distinction between "pseudonyms" and
"pseudospoofing" is the root of where your thinking took a wrong turn.
People are under no obligation to tell you whether the name you know
them by is their only name -- the same way that they don't have to tell
you that though you only know them as "captain of the baseball team",
they are also "clerk in the bank" and "father of three".  By assuming
that "the right way for things to be" is for everyone to have a single
name, uniformly used, you have found a conspiracy where there was
simply a difference of opinion.

You can quote this (in its entirety) to the cypherpunks if you want.
Copyright 1993 John Gilmore.  Reproduction permitted only in entirety.

	John