Re: jolly roger
Cypherpunks is already aiding the stupid.. I mean look at the amount of spam that comes into this list. It's mind boggling!! I've actually downloaded and installed Outlook Express for the sole purpose of using a filtering agent that interfaces with it. *shudder* I wonder how they are getting pointers to the list. In my more paranoid moments I imagine certain Agents of the TLA (Hi Jeff!) pointing them here hoping to get Cypherpunks shut down due to an "Aiding the Stupid" charge or drive out the regulars due to all the clueless twits showing up. Either way it seems more and more like a form of denial of service attack.
Re: jolly roger
isn't it considered entrapment? maybe i'm unclear on the entrapment thing --snipped-- Personally, I think they ought to be tracked down and dealt with more directly. Cops who solicit illegalities need to be dealt with directly. But that's just my opinion. I think it should just be considered entrapment and made unusable in court. That would end the problem right there.
Re: jolly roger
At 8:59 PM -0400 6/16/00, Randy wrote: yeah, those ppl do tend to do such things, and use the same abbreviations, and apparently don't feel the need to capitalize proper nouns, or anything else, kurth. and time it is to roundly ignore such ppl, yaknow too many bozos already on this list to waste time on another illiterate ppls --tim e.e. cummings may
Re: Jolly Roger
Personally, I think they ought to be tracked down and dealt with more directly. Cops who solicit illegalities need to be dealt with directly. But that's just my opinion. I think it should just be considered entrapment and made unusable in court. That would end the problem right there. That is the only acceptable way to treat entrapment. I'm too busy now but someday, in my golden years perhaps, a reverse sting could prove good entertainment. Like DOOM in meatspace.
Re: Jolly Roger
At 11:56 AM -0700 6/13/00, Michael Motyka wrote: Fine, the intersection and union of our moral universes are equivalent. How do you make it part of the legal system? It's probably hopeless. I was just taking issue with your "only morally acceptable" point. One scenario might be to make a citizen's arrest of a cop who is doing something illegal as part of an entrapment. Then make a stink that he is not being prosecuted. (I vaguely recall a case in recent years where an underaged cop wannabee was part of a sting of a liquor store. When the merchant discovered he was underaged, he held the kid and made a stink when the official cops arrived and released the kid.) Of course, dealing with cops this way could be a ticket to getting a nightstick shoved someplace. Which is why some folks advocate simply dealing with such scofflaws more directly, and from afar. (I'm not advocating anyone do this, but someone who has been "set up" in an entrapment is probably favorably disposed toward dealing with the cop with a hunting rifle from afar. Is it morally acceptable? You betcha.) We're all a bunch of rats looking for rat chow. If there is no reward we just don't bother. Forcing courts to throw out entrapments and bear the legal costs of defendants may be an adequate solution. Go for it, dude. Me, I don't have time to waste on such quixotic crusades. On another note, I heard a rumor that there might be some new, pro-privacy, 1st Ammendment-based law or rulings on the seizure and admissibility of personal writings. Any truth to that? Don't know, but most such rulings tend to be wrong-headed. The First is not about some sacrosanct right to have writings kept private, it is about whether the government can ban certain writings or speech or can impose prior restraint. The proper Amendment for issues of personal writings is of course the Fourth, not the First. The Fifth _may_ be implicated, but journals and letters are usually considered to be fair game, if discovered. All the usual stuff about illegal searches, fruit of the poisoned tree, etc. On a related note, reporters should have no rights that others don't have. So-called "shield laws" and laws about "protection of sources" are bogus. Reporters and writers are not in some special class. We are all covered by the First and Fourth Amendments, and the others constitutional provisions about trials, producing evidence, testifying, self-incrimination, etc. --Tim May -- -:-:-:-:-:-:-: Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
Re: jolly roger
On Mon, 12 Jun 2000, Kurth Bemis wrote: At 11:04 PM 6/11/2000 -0400, Daniel wrote: hrmit seems that whenever i see something about privacy or free speech kiddies always bring up this anarchist shit. Is it me or do other ppl notice this also.? I wonder how they are getting pointers to the list. In my more paranoid moments I imagine certain Agents of the TLA (Hi Jeff!) pointing them here hoping to get Cypherpunks shut down due to an "Aiding the Stupid" charge or drive out the regulars due to all the clueless twits showing up. Either way it seems more and more like a form of denial of service attack. It does give an opertunity to sharpen up on the creative writing skills. ~kurth hi my name is brad i was to have the anarchy cookbook and such but have lost it where did you find the joly roger. this is my friends computer email me back at [EMAIL PROTECTED] thanx brad [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Note to AOL users: for a quick shortcut to reply Alan Olsen| to my mail, just hit the ctrl, alt and del keys. "In the future, everything will have its 15 minutes of blame."
Re: jolly roger
Kurth Bemis [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: At 11:04 PM 6/11/2000 -0400, Daniel wrote: hrmit seems that whenever i see something about privacy or free speech kiddies always bring up this anarchist shit. Is it me or do other ppl notice this also.? What is "ppl," anyway? People of the Proletariat? Anarchy is attractive to soem people because they figure that they would occupy a fairly high position on the hierarchy of force. They dislike any form of authority. For an example of how an anarchist society would be with these people in it, go to a big city public high school, quantity the abuse, violence, and idiocy that you see, and raise it to the fourth power. Anarchist theory doesn't necessarily require any kind of hierarchy of force, or, as Heinlein put it, "violence: the supreme power from which all other powers are derived," but I seriously doubt that the anarchist kiddies who are trying to be "elite" (or 31337, if you prefer) and "cool." They'd like a system where if they don't like the guy across the room for no particular reason, they can go beat his face in anyway. Libertarian ideals are something altogether different as are, I would assume, the more refined anarchist ideals. As for the Anarchist's Cookbook, half the things in there are more likely to get you killed than to work as intended. You can't expect to go mixing chemicals and be safe, even if you have good instructions, if you don't know anything about the underlying chemicals. The people asking for bomb instructions and such don't make an attempt to use proper English grammar. I doubt that they would be willing to put forth the effort to learn proper procedures for handling chemicals. Brad the clueless wrote: hi my name is brad i was to have the anarchy cookbook and such but have lost it where did you find the joly roger. this is my friends computer email me back at [EMAIL PROTECTED] thanx brad
Re: jolly roger
Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: At 4:34 PM -0500 6/12/00, David Marshall wrote: The people asking for bomb instructions and such don't make an attempt to use proper English grammar. I doubt that they would be willing to put forth the effort to learn proper procedures for handling chemicals. Brad the clueless wrote: hi my name is brad i was to have the anarchy cookbook and such but have lost it where did you find the joly roger. this is my friends computer email me back at [EMAIL PROTECTED] thanx brad The fact is that many, even most, of these "can u send me info on how to make bombz?" queries have a very similar structure. Coincidence? A commentary on 9th grade educational levels? Or high school graduate cops trolling? As I remarked in private discussion with another list member earlier today, it's pretty obvious that either: 1) It's the same guy. 2) It's a small group of people reading out of the same playbook. The persistance seems to exclude targetted trolling. The trolling isn't destroying the list with flame wars or clogging it with junk, so it doesn't quite fit the profile of a troller. Most of them would have given up by now, or graduated beyond something which is obviously idiot-fodder. The aim would therefore seem to be one of the following: 1) Be annoying. 2) Make a political point somehow. 3) An LEO trolling for idiots. 4) To see how many creative responses the poster can get. About a year ago I saw an article about a cop in the midwest somewhere who uses his home computer to go trolling for illegal activities. My hunch is that many of these "can u send me child porn?" and "help me make a bomb" queries are by cops. I think I read the same article. They do this on a routine basis with child porn. Most of it probably happens in IRC channels. Of course, since the media *still* hasn't figured out the difference between USENET, web-based news boards, AOL-based resources and Internet-based resources (e.g. AOL chatrooms versus Web-based ones), IRC and chat rooms, and a multitude of other things, any information they may provide about where these stings take place is suspect. Then enter people who want to don a perceived "white hat" and call themselves "hackers." They possess few, if any, technical skills, and instead sit around in IRC channels trolling for idiots, send trolls to mailing lists, put up junk all over systems like GNUtella in an attempt to catch child pornographers (there are errors in that approach which I won't go into here), and worse. This provides them with a sense of purpose, and gives them something which sounds impressive to put on their next employment or graduate school application. Both of these groups tend to play the part too well. Anybody who can write a coherent thought isn't going to be posting to Cypherpunks asking for porn or bomb making instructions. Instead, they would find it themselves, or pull out a chemistry book and learn something. So the authors try to act like complete idiots, but unless the poster is six years old or possesses a room temperature IQ (on the centigrade scale) it's obviously a setup. Therefore I tend to agree with you that many, but probably not all, of these incompetent requests are from the cops or from such "do-gooder" organizations. They're probably collecting lists of people that they can pull an Operation Sundevil on. If they don't have any evidence, they'll just make sure that "it looked like he was going for a gun." Either way, they get media exposure and may have a shot at some kind of personal benefit like a promotion. Making bombs is fundamentally easy. Making really good bombs is more difficult. Either way, the knowledge required is available from an undergraduate-level organic chemistry text. Anybody who has the intelligence and mental stability to safely handle the chemicals without blowing themselves up can read and comprehend the chemistry text and acn go pull synthesis procedures out of some reference like "Chemical Abstracts." In my mind, there's no doubt that these are LEO trolls. Of course, it's always possible that the posters really are morons who will probably be working at McDonalds' all their lives and will keep forgetting my fries and screwing up my change. McDonalds' will hire anybody. Personally, I think they ought to be tracked down and dealt with more directly. Cops who solicit illegalities need to be dealt with directly. But that's just my opinion. I think it should just be considered entrapment and made unusable in court. That would end the problem right there.
