Re: Dr. Vulis

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

At 06:59 PM 11/5/96 +0100, Gary Howland wrote:

>> > I recall we've been through this over a year ago, when I saw an 
announcement
>> > of a cypherpunks physical meeting where someone was excluded for his 
political
>> > views, and I said that I don't consider myself a cypherpunk. I'm glad that
>> > John and Bill, the auhorities on cypherpunk membership, finally concur.
>
>
>I think he is referring to the explicit and public non-invite of Jim
>Bell to a cypherpunks meeting, due to some of Jim Bell's Assination
>Politics posts.
>Gary


I'd like to correct this impression.  Alan Olsen was, apparently, quite 
aware of my AP posts when I (and everyone else) was invited to the first 
Portland CP meeting.  I had heard no objection to them from him.  The 
meeting was advertised as being sufficiently confidential that he 
specifically requested that nobody take pictures or record the meeting, etc. 
 Fair enough, I thought.  I generally interpreted this to mean that the 
meeting was at least approximately "off the record."

Arriving at the meeting, I detected no indication that Alan Olsen was at all 
disturbed at me, or anything I had said previously.  At the meeting all went 
well, _or_so_I_thought_.    It was all very routine.  One thing I decided to 
mention, actually only hint at, was a technical capability that I was 
working one.   However, I gave merely the broadest hints; What I did say 
would certainly have sounded technically at least implausible, if not quite 
impossible.   (The situation was somewhat analogous to the old story about 
the blind men coming across an elephant; one touches only the tail and calls 
it a snake, the other touches a leg and calls it a tree, etc.)  
Intentionally, I didn't explain how I would accomplish the goal I described.

Even so, there was still no indication from Alan Olsen that anything was 
amiss. And the meeting ended on that note.

Much to my surprise, Alan Olsen blurted out over the CP list only a barely 
fair description of what I had said (which itself was only the hints I chose 
to describe) and called me various names, etc.  I think he used the term 
"voodoo" to describe what I was planning to develop.  When, eventually, I 
_do_ explain the whole thing, and I repeat exactly what I told the assembled 
group, it will become obvious why what I described _sounded_ so implausible, 
yet was quite doable given modern technology.

I should point out that given how little I told, avoiding the REAL 
explanation, it could very well have been taken for voodoo.  And it didn't 
surprise me that SOMEBODY would have come to that impression.   The 
surprising and shocking thing about it was that he (Alan Olsen) violated the 
very confidentiality he had insisted on, without any sort of warning, and 
after-the-fact.  Needless to say, I raked him over the coals publicly, on 
CP, for having done this, and he was severely chastized because of this.  
"Ripped him a new one"  might describe it, although he certainly deserved 
the treatment.

Obviously, a number of people on this list got the mistaken impression that 
this disagreement had something to do with my AP proposal.  As far as I 
know, quite the contrary, it did not.  But I saw two possibilities, after 
the fact:  One, Alan Olsen hid his disapproval for AP, hoping to catch me in 
some sort of contradiction.  Two, after he was embarrassed by my calling him 
on his bad behavior, he grabbed at the first thing he could think of to 
criticize me.





  
Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com