Re: "Macintosh -- the Surveillance System for the Rest of Us

["Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>]

At 8:48 PM -0400 10/3/96, Robert Hettinga wrote:

>If one were to be completely uncharitable in the interpretation of Tim's
>most recent outbreak of vitriol here, it would seem that he's offended that

My comments here are not vitriolic, just factual. Clearly, while the
"guerilla" crypto meeting was happening, the higher-ups were selling out
their customers and going much further than they needed to in ensuring a
Big Brother State.

(BTW, in response to my "the surveillance system for the rest of us"
comment, Andrew Loewenstern sent me a note in which he contrasted Apple's
"1984" commercial with the current reality.)

>he wasn't asked first to be the keynote at MacCrypto, the conference a
>bunch of us had at Apple a month ago, which, I might add, was a
>considerable success.

This is the epitome of armchair psychoananalysis. How can you _possibly_
know what I thought about things? Jeez.

>Of course, the real irony here is that Tim *was* the first person we asked
>to keynote. The irony compounds itself slightly more when you consider the
>*last* person who we asked, Phil Zimmermann, at the *last* possible minute,
>graciously accepted our invitation and delivered his keynote speech to a
>very enthusiastic crowd.

Who cares? Such comparisons are odious. I responded to Vinnie, not to the
"us" implied in "we asked," and the matter would've remained between Vinnie
and me had he not shared our e-mail with you and had you not then gone into
one of your  "free association" rants. Recall that even Vinnie was highly
critical of this performance.

>Anyway, let us *be* charitable, and take Tim's apparent vituperation about
>Apple's complete capitulation to government pressure, not to mention the
>appalling failure of the MacCrypto conference to lob any clues over the
>walls of Fortress Apple, entirely at their face value, shall we?
>
>Let's assume that he really *wasn't* trying to rattle the bars on the Mac
>crypto community's collective cage, and that he actually was trying to
>contribute something constructive to what appears to be a *truly* apalling
>situation to anyone who wants strong crypto, and thus internet commerce, to
>be transparent and easy to do on the Macintosh. The Mac crypto community's
>cage is plenty rattled by the recent news from Washington, as it is.

Fuck off, to be blunt. You've got to learn to start making actual points,
and not trying to show your writing chops from the Hunter S. Thompson
Correspondence School of Creative Writing.


>Frankly, I'd rather see actual code being written than press releases,
>wouldn't you, Tim?

Fuck off. Back into my killfile you go.

--Tim May

"The government announcement is disastrous," said Jim Bidzos,.."We warned IBM
that the National Security Agency would try to twist their technology."
[NYT, 1996-10-02]
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."