Re: Anonymous posters & Misinformation

[anonymous@extropia.wimsey.com]

 -=> Quoting Jason Burrell to All <=-

 JB> mcdaniel@u.washington.edu (McDaniel) wrote:
 > Anonymity is possible with any e-mail address.  I have noticed
 > however that a higher proportion of anonymous posters abuse
 > the trust of their fellow (and often gullible) netters with
 > clever deceptions and so on.

I would love to see examples of this.  "Macho" McDaniel seems to have a
weed up his ass over the whole concept of anonymity on the net, and will
flame any anonymous poster in any newsgroup.  He simply doesn't get it.
He presumably wants us all to wear red uniforms and advance in ranks in
frontal assaults, "fight fair" and generally act like stationary
targets in controversial netvenues.  I was astonished to see the
completely irrational flap the control addicts in rec.guns,
talk.politics.guns and ca-firearms@ shell.portal.com put up when several
people objected to the unilateral banning of anon posts.

It was just incredible how these "freedom-loving Americans" couldn't
handle the concept of anonymity or posts they couldn't _control_.  I
can't understand why they don't go get a job with Sarah Brady, the NSA
or the BATF so they can make a paying career of oppressing others.

Not once was a logical refutation of the anon argument posed but in
spite of this the anti-anon hysteria prevailed.

 JB> Now, I could go into the process of forging mail using
 JB> the "magic 5*5", but I won't. I don't want to teach a bunch
 JB> of people to forge mail and give them a false sense of security.

Yes, this is the whole point.  If someone wants to hoax a newsgroup,
he can _easily_ fabricate an "good" ID in the time it has taken me to
write this message so far.  If McDaniel is so phobic about remailered
posts, _why doesn't he scroll past them and shut the fuck up?_  Anon
posts _say_ they're anon and are posted on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.
Obviously McDaniel is too neurotic to do either and wishes us to share
his personal problem.

His argument about anon "net pollution" is also absurd, considering the
staggering differential level of "pollution" generated by other perennial
net-banes such as gross over-quoting and irrelevant cross-posting.  This
reminds me of the stingingly accurate net adage...

        "Sig files are annoying, juvenile, stupid and a waste of
        bandwidth.  Of course, so are 90% of the posts on Usenet."

McDaniel can save his tantrums and stick to moderated newsgroups
populated by like minded netnazis.

 > My proposal would only make anonymos posters known to the list
 > owner.  I believe it is a pretty much accepted belief that NSA
 > keeps track of atleast those users of anon.penet.fi.. so
 > who are they being anonymous from?  Just the general readers.

 JB> Now here we go. The cypherpunks remailers don't have mapping tables.
 JB> They don't send back confirmations. The messages come out in
 JB> a form like: "From: nobody@shell.portal.com". 

Ignorance strikes again, as it did in the rec.guns exchange!  Penet is a
trivial, unencrypted remailer.  It provides only the most simple
anonymity.  Other remailers are run from private, unlogged machines
using PGP and sophisticated traffic-analysis countermeasures.  If PGP
has been made transparent by NSA cryptanalysts all bets are off, but
otherwise the sophisticated use of chained, encrypted cypherpunks
remailers makes anon-posting virtually bulletproof.

 JB> These remailers are designed to PREVENT the kind of thing you want to
 JB> do.
 
Indeed!

 > Perhaps a crack-down on current anonymous abuses would encourage
 > responsible parties to develop services more responsive to
 > taking care of abusive usage and educating their users as to
 > their own responsibility.

"Crack-downs"...  I'm really getting tired of this mindset.  No doubt
McDaniel is salivating profusely waiting for Gore's Federally controlled
"Information Superhighway" with all e-mail identified and tracable by
use of Clinton's National ID "SmartCard" (don't laugh - this was a
specific, stated purpose of the project).

 JB> This defeats the purpose of an anonymous remailer. If I'm going
 JB> to send anonymous E-MAIL/posts and then have someone else know about
 JB> it, it isn't very anonymous, is it?

I should say not.

 > There are some groups where I would never want to see anonymous
 > posting restricted.

Having seen McDaniel's flames of anon users in other forums, I _really_
doubt the sincerity of this statement.