the Cypherpunk and the Shadow

[catalyst-remailer@netcom.com]

L.Detweiler here. I'm extremely hurt by Hal Finney's recent accusations
that I am trying to `sabotage' remailers. Quite to the contrary, I 
am attempting to strengthen your infrastructure through frequent use
and pointing out the lapses in design. I see cypherpunks attacking
Unix security holes with such fervor, but how is that you, as designers,
failed to even anticipate a `geometrical explosion' attack after 
several years of remailer operation? If I wanted to destroy your
remailers I would be sending you exploding mailbombs every second!

Hal Finney claims that I have a `well known enmity' to anonymity &
pseudonymity. Quite to the contrary I am fully in favor of responsible
uses of it. But I also believe it is not for a remailer operator to
determine `responsible use'. (And, actually, I thought you did too). 
The entire population of cyberspace does not understand 
this simple concept: cutting off a message at the source is 
censorship; cutting it off at the destination is filtering. 
I am trying to force people to understand this. 

Where are the reputation systems that some Cypherpunks have talked about? 
They are *far* more important to cyberspatial development than remailers.
And in fact they will help us deal with remailers in a positive way.

The essence of the animosity toward remailers is not that anonymity
is involved, but that people wish to be able to control what they
themselves read, and (for the closet control freaks) what other 
people read. The latter urge I believe is generally a perversion of
free speech, outside of exceptional cases (e.g. where a parent controls
what their child reads, although even this I have some objections to).
But the former demand is certainly legitimate. I don't believe we have
a right to ever *force* anyone to listen to us.

The basic solution to this is a reputation system that associates a
`credibility' or `interest' factor to `sources' (e.g. senders, identified
by their email addresses) based on collective judgement, i.e. voting.
It is a trivial concept but one which has so far utterly eluded *everyone*
in cyberspace. It is the solution to virtually every filtering and censorship
hullaballo that erupts every few seconds at some place over Usenet, mailing
lists, and cyberspace. 

The Cypherpunks are in the best position to implement such a system. But
instead you attack the wrong end of the problem, just as everyone else
in cyberspace. Your philosophy should push you to realize the solution,
but you are blinded by the same delusions that everyone else is.

As for recent messages sent to remailers: it is true that I have been
sending many messages. Mathew Ghio has switched off his remailer until
they stop, he says. How fragile a system! How utterly fragile! 

Strive to achieve the level of resiliency of a phone system. Does the
whole network come to a halt when one crank caller gets loose? Do people
panic and scream that We're Under Attack By the Detweiler The Antichrist
when some telemarketer gets a computerized autodialer? In cyberspace,
it is the equivalent of an atom bomb. Why? Because it is an untamed
wilderness, full of petty demagogues who derive their power and get their
jollies from perpetuating this turmoil by failing to modify the 
infrastructure and adopt the attitude `our system is not so fragile
it will be destroyed by abuse'. 

Yes, that is the key: abuse of the phone system exists, but there are
established protocols for dealing with it. It is not a case of every
new `abuse' becoming an international debacle with hordes of people
screaming for blood and vengeance.

Zen saying: `man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it is dark'.

* * *

Yes, I am sending out many messages through your remailers. They are
designed to get Netcom to change what I see as oppressive policies:

1. They do not agree that their own forums are public forums. They
prohibit notes about competition and intimidate people from posting
criticism by calling them over the phone over negative posts.

2. Bruce Woodcock censored my other account for the reason that I 
borrowed a Support `signature' for satiric effect (in news.admin.policy).
On the phone he took the ridiculous position that it wasn't my stealing
the signature but `the content of the message'.

3. Bruce Woodcock at Netcom fails to make his affiliation with Netcom
clear in his messages in netcom.general. He has repeatedly browbeated
and dismissed customers in the forum. I see him as illustrative of
a problem at Netcom where the sysadmins don't really give a damn about
any individual user or customer satisfaction of individuals. And there
is *no coherent policy* about terminating accounts. 

4. Whether you realize it, when the people you don't like are censored,
your own protection from tyranny and oppression is diminished. If the
least among us is not free or has been done an injustice, then none
of us are free and we all have been done an injustice. When my account
is yanked without any consequence to Netcom, they can yank any one
of your accounts without consequence.

5. Freedom of speech does *not* exist unless you have *security*. If you
can be deprived your ability to post by anyone, anywhere, anytime, for
any reason, you do *not* have any security. `BS. I can get an account
somewhere else easy.' You are dangerously deluded in this thinking. 
Unless there are safeguards no one has any right.

6. I have deliberately gone "easy" on my output of messages to remailers.
I could easily flood them all into oblivion. But I am sending messages
at a gentle drip-drip-drip pace. They make an excellent cloud over any 
traffic analysis being done, IMHO.

7. Ultimately we are on the same side of freedom of speech and privacy. 
I have only criticized cypherpunks for hypocrisy and sinister aspects of 
your practices that seem to contradict your own adopted philosophy. If
your philosophy was openly `we are going to poison cyberspace with 
untold tentacles to manipulate puublic opinion' I might still attack you
but certainly wouldn't accuse you of hypocrisy  <g>

8. Someone remarked on my postings as `performance art'. This is my
intent. I am quite amused at people like T.C.May calling it `intense
abuse'. Hee, hee. I can imagine T.C.May going to see Star Wars and
after getting out of the movie diverting all his money into Scud
Launchers because it makes clear DARTH VADAR IS COMING!

9. Why should I lose my netcom account for vague, unspecified reasons?
I am the Oliphant, the Thomas Nast, the Mark Twain, the Doonesbury of 
Cyberspace. And I have been censored at something like 5 accounts now for my 
editorial cartoons and razor-sharp satire in cyberspace. Why? Because I am a 
perfecting this misunderstood `art of flaming and provocation to effect
social consciousness'. And every time that I am censored and no
one gives a damn, and my jugular vein is slashed in front of you all
with nary an objection (and an abundance of encouragement) it is a chip 
off of *YOUR* rights in cyberspace.

10. I am the Jew of cyberspace, kicked out of my house with my 
furniture confiscated at Netcom despite my pleadings. Yes, I had
many megabytes of private email and files that were not backed up.
And they all evaporated when someone at Netcom (gosh, I don't know
who, they only give first names) decided they didn't like my scathing
satire of Netcom in news.admin.policy. What was the procedure to
censor me? The criteria? It is as unknown as civility in cyberspace.

Cypherpunks, I continue to try to get you and the rest of the world
in cyberspace to realize you are playing with fire and gasolene. 
You don't understand the forces at play and you, through your own
actions and thoughts, are perpetuating a dangerously unstable system
when simple solutions are hair-widths away.

Why am I not implementing these so called `simple solutions' myself?
Because the basic problem is not that no one is implementing them,
it is that no one has the understanding to do so. This is a problem
of a serious mental block on the part of everyone with a brain and
a keyboard. And I am trying to break through that mental block in 
the collective consciousness of Cyberspace the only way I know how.

If you permit my messages to percolate through your remailers, your
infrastructure will be ultimately strengthened as people begin to
understand that the proper response to inflammatory anonymous email
is a disinterested "ho hum yawn" instead of erupting like Mount
Saint Helens or shaking in livid anger like the San Andreas Fault.
You complain about overreaction of outsiders to anonymous mail? It
is nothing compared to your own insane frenzies. `THE REMAILERS ARE
DYING FROM DETWEILER DAMNATION! YAAAAH'

How can you claim I am trying to sabotage your remailers? I am
immensely dependent on them. I am more dependent on them than *you*
are. I don't have a voice without them. My Nyx account would be 
censored immediately from your screeching complaints if I didn't 
post through them! I can send messages, therefore I am. I cannot post 
from my own account, therefore I am dead. Look at how you target even
innocent bystanders with postmaster-mailing-bomb campaigns without
the slightest provocation! Look at how Tim May immediately exploits
Netcom records to try to `out' me wherever I live in cyberspace?
You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Have you ever read Calvin? `Rules are for everyone else, not for me.'
`I will have the power, but no one else will.' Your grandiose philosophy 
of privacy, in practice is that `We will be bathed in the riches of privacy 
but our enemies will be robbed of it.'

I will continue to send my messages through your remailers. If you
wish to shut them down because you really believe they are a threat
to your existence, fine. But if they are, I think you should reconsider
your philosophy of anonymity in cyberspace as fundamentally impossible 
in practice. I have been *gentle* with your remailers. I haven't even
studied the Perl code for the *really* insidious holes and glitches.
Believe me, if I wanted to destroy cypherpunk remailers I would have
brought them to their knees a *long* time ago. I am trying to provide
the impetus to you to *strengthen* them. And the Netcom `electric
prod' is a way to kill two birds with one stone.

Would I spend dozens of hours writing about `Anonymity on the Internet'
if I was against it? No, your lesson to learn is that I believe in it
with such passion that I have dedicated a significant fraction of my
waking hours to promote it-- but through means that are poorly understood.

Sincerely,
L.Detweiler