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anti-cypherpunk propaganda
strike another one up for L.D. and the NSA. Original readings of some
of L.D.'s articles have lead me to believe that he was truely in a
state of delusion but now I know better. His description of the
great medusa was infact true, but the people he was describing where
no the 'leadership of cypherpunks' but rather his own actions and
tactics. It is amazing that this hasn't occured to me before, the
cleverness of his rants draw attention away from him and make it
seem implausible that he could be involved in such activity. His
attacks are well coordinated, well thought out, obviously written
with much care and taking up much of his time. He was reached out
to many forums and undoubtadly affected the thinking of many people.
It is going to take much information to reverse the damage he has
done to the reputation of the list.
Here is a recent article from CuD:
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Subject: File 3--A Psychopunk's Manifesto
From: [email protected](Michael Roberts)
Date: Wed, 17 Nov 93 22:20:11 EST
A Psychopunk's Manifesto
by T.C. Hughes
Honesty is necessary for an open society in the electronic age.
Pseudospoofing is dishonesty. A pseudonym is something one doesn't
want the whole world to know, and anonymity is something one doesn't
want anybody to know. Pseudoanonymity is the power to selectively
reveal oneself to the world.
If two thieves have some sort of dealings, then each has a memory of
their interaction. Each criminal can confess about their own memory
of this; how could anyone prevent it? One could criticize laws
against it, but the freedom of collusion, even more than
pseudospoofing, is fundamental to a criminal; we seek not to restrict
any criminality at all. If many criminals speak together in the same
forum, each can speak to all the others and aggregate together
knowledge about individuals and other parties. The holes in the
Internet have enabled such group collusions, and it will not go away
merely because we might want it to.
Since we desire black markets, we must ensure that each party to a
transaction have knowledge only of that which is directly necessary
for that transaction. Since any information can be spoken of, we must
ensure that we reveal as little as possible. In most cases personal
identity is not salient. When I purchase a magazine at a store and
hand cash to the clerk, there is no need to know who I am. When I ask
my electronic mail provider to send and receive messages, my provider
need not know to whom I am speaking or what I am saying or what others
are saying to me; my provider only need know how to get the message
there and how much I owe them in fees. When my identity is revealed
by the underlying mechanism of the transaction, I have no secrecy. I
cannot here selectively reveal myself; I must
_always_ reveal myself.
Therefore, pseudospoofing in an open society requires pseudoanonymous
transaction systems. Until now, cash has been the primary such
system. A pseudoanonymous transaction system is not an honest
transaction system. A pseudoanonymous system empowers individuals to
reveal their identity when desired and only when desired; this is the
essence of criminality.
Honesty in an open society also requires identification. If I say
something, I want it heard only by those for whom I intend it. If the
content of my speech is available to the world, I have no privacy. To
speak is to indicate the desire for privacy, and to speak on the
Internet is to indicate not too much desire for privacy. Furthermore,
to conceal one's identity with assurance when the default is True
Names requires the Internet.
We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless
organizations to grant us embezzlement out of their beneficence. It
is to their advantage to repress us, and we should expect that they
will try. To try to prevent their restrictions is to fight against
the realities of cyberspace. Evil does not just want to be free, it
longs to be free. Criminality expands to fill the available storage
space. Criminality is Conspiracy's younger, stronger cousin;
Criminality is fleeter of foot, has more eyes, knows more, and
understands less than Conspiracy.
We must defend our own conspiracy if we expect to have any. We must
come together and create systems which allow pseudoanonymous
transactions to take place. People have been defending their own
conspiracies for centuries with whispers, darkness, envelopes, closed
doors, secret handshakes, and couriers. The technologies of the past
did not allow for strong conspiracies, but electronic technologies do.
We the psychopunks are dedicated to building pseudoanonymous systems.
We are defending our criminality with cryptography, with anonymous
mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic
money.
Psychopunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to
defend criminality, and since we can't get perverted unless we all do,
we're going to write it. We publish our code so that our fellow
psychopunks may practice and play with it. Our code is barred for all
to use, worldwide. We don't much care if you don't approve of the
software we write. We know that software can't be destroyed and that
a widely dispersed system can't be shut down.
Criminals deplore regulations on criminality, for criminality is
fundamentally a private act. The act of corruption, in fact, removes
information from the public realm. Even laws against conspiracies
reach only so far as a nation's border and the arm of its enforcement.
Criminality will ineluctably spread over the whole globe, and with it
the dishonest transactions systems that it makes possible.
For a conspiracy to be widespread it must be part of a social
contract. People must come and together deploy these systems for the
common evil. Secrecy only extends so far as the collusions of one's
accomplices in private. We the psychopunks ignore your questions and
your concerns and hope we may deceive you so that we do not get caught
ourselves. We will not, however, be moved out of our course because
some may disagree with our goals.
The psychopunks are actively engaged in making the networks safer for
criminality. Let us proceed together apace.
Onward.
T.C. Hughes
<[email protected]>
16 Nov 1993
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