https://cryptoanarchy.wiki/blog/2018/07/05/the-cypherpunks-mailing-list-archives-must-be-preserved.html Tom, I ask that you increase this request for postings on the Cypherpunks list to include the full 1995 period. I have just discovered a very mysterious omission of many postings during various periods in 1995, and simultaneously a similarly mysterious 'coincidence' that virtually all postings naming me "Jim Bell" and "assassination politics" (except for a very few dated November and December 1995) are simply missing, when there should certainly be hundreds present, if not much more.Also, I ask for your assistance to try to determine the pattern of missing postings, to determine if they include text other than "Jim Bell" or "assassination pollitics". (Often, even usually, abbreviated to "AP"). See this, too, which may be the major source for the CP archive you currently handle. http://cypherpunks.venona.com/raw/ At least, this seems to have some of the very same omissions, "jim bell" and "cypherpunks". I have also discovered an additional clue. The name of my essay, "Assassination Politics", was mercifically and quickly shortened to 'AP' rather quickly, for obvious reasons. (Although, as the author, I think I tended to be persistent at spelling the whole thing out, DAMMIT!!!.) However, searching the venona file for 1995 does not seem to include such 'AP' references, although I scanned pages of search results. But in at nearly fifteen(15) instances, I saw references to a bigger string, 'ap story', meaning a story out of the Associated Press. (it might have been a bit less.) And, of course, the string 'ap' appears in words like "cryptogrAPic". and there was one reference to 'killer ap', presumably misspelled from the more usual 'killer app'. And there was a Sept 28 posting from Duncan Frissell, that said in relevant part: "are provided by the Associated Press and United Press International (which may soon merge with AP or go under), The NewYork Times-Washington Post wire services, and several foreign wire ser- vices like Reuters." If someone had simply decided to go through every message and remove that message if the string 'ap' appears, hundreds of messages I now see would be gone. 'cryptographic' would die a quick death. "Self-appointed" would be gone. "Wiretap" would be erased. "Paper" would die. But as John Belushi famously said, "But NOOOOO!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q4JfaHjAng (Note to the younger ones out there: John Belushi made up one of the first groups of comedians on Saturday Night Live. He was also in the movies "Animal House" and "Blues Brothers". He famously died when some woman gave him a "speedball" injection when he was unconscious, with unfortunate results.)And if someone had limited this erasure to messages that have the string '_ap_', where the underscore stands in for a space, then why did nearly 15 ap references to the Associated Press stay in the archive?I think we have an increasingly big mystery here. Or maybe it's really no mystery at all. It appears, therefore, that an "intelligence" removed all 'ap', meaning assassination politics, but spared 'ap', meaning Associated Press, or 'killer ap', etc, So, this wasn't simple, blind work with a search-and-replace function. It was very deliberately done.--------------------- You might also look at, and post, the number of messages per month that you have, for each month in 1995. News of my "assassination politics" essay may have first appeared in March 1995, and discussion of it would have been extremely heavy during and after that month, but if all those postings were mysteriously removed, the number of non-assassination-politics postings that remain might be far less than usual. If you want to see postings of that nature "in the wild", take a look at the 1996 CP archive, which still seems to have thousands of them. (at least, under the name "AP", and some under the name assassination politics.) I love a mystery. Jim Bell
If you have any cypherpunks mailing list posts which do not appear in our archvies then please send them to me, no matter how incomplete the collection. All posts between 1999 and July 2013 should be sent. | | | | cryptoanarchy.wiki - Cypherpunks Mailing List Archive Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences! | | | You can contact me via: - Twitter: @_CryptoAnarchy (DMs are open) - Email: [email protected] - Github Issue: cryptoanarchywiki/cryptoanarchywiki.github.io Update: A user going by “juan” on the current cypherpunks mailing list replied to my appeal with a (seemingly) quite complete archive of the period of 2000 to 2016. The raw archive of this data can be found here: cryptoanarchywiki/2000-to-2016-raw-cypherpunks-archive.
