[109612] in Cypherpunks
Re: PING: Alex and others... Your efforts at work!
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anonymous)
Tue Mar 30 22:57:01 1999
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 05:18:35 +0200 (CEST)
From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
To: mail2news@basement.replay.com, mail2news@nym.alias.net,
cypherpunks@toad.com
Reply-To: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
Doug Elias <dme7@cornell.edu> wrote:
> NymVictim <nymvictim@aol.com> describes a stalker using anonymous
> remailers to do her stalking, causing great anguish and fear to
> his/her family, and puts the whole anonymity-effort on trial for
> giving this sicko the means to achieve those ends; FitugMix
> <tonne@thur.de> responds:
Did anyone find it ironic that an unnamed person (Nymvictim) was
doing the complaining about "anonymity"? Anonymity is not "on
trial". It's an established fact of life, even for the COMPLAINER.
Unless you start requiring people to wear identity badges when they
walk down the street, you are going to encounter dozens of
"anonymous" people in the course of a normal day. Do some "abuse"
that anonymity? Sure. But the alternative is a police state.
It was a great statesman who said that those who would trade freedom
for security deserve neither.
> >Please... this is not the place for such stupidity... Dont
> >you know that PEOPLE kill people, not guns? PEOPLE stalk
> >people, not REMAILERS. Besides, there are several other
> >ways to be anonymous WITHOUT the use of remailers.
> >
> >There are many details to your story that you failed to
> >mention... could it be that someone in your family provoked
> >such an attack? Who knows, but please... Dont cry about
> >remailers operators.
> >
> >Why dont you go and shut down Ford/Chevy/Dodge for making
> >cars that drunks get into and kill people with? Same logic
> >you're using....
> >
> >Stop crying and defend yourself properly... bait that
> >stalking bitch and then beat her until she is a dead,
> >bloody mess.... That's what I would do to someone if they
> >stalked my family.
> >
> Fine ... you're providing a service, and someone is misusing/abusing
> that service in such a way as to cause, or at the very least, threaten
> to cause someone else harm. Sure, you-as-the-service-provider are NOT
> the person doing the dirty ... but how does it make you feel that your
> personal efforts are *contributing* to that activity? If you *could*
> do something about it, *would* you? Or would you simply wash your
> hands and walk away, saying "If they didn't do it this way, they'd
> just do it some other way"?
And I suppose that if someone did it making "anonymous" phone calls
from a payphone or sending "anonymous" snail mail using a public
mailbox and no return address, you'd try to lay a guilt trip on the
phone company or post office? Would you say that telephone and mail
service were "on trial"?
Let's see, every time I put coins in a payphone, I'm supporting the
phone company. Every time I buy a stamp to mail a letter, I'm
supporting the post office. So I should feel guilty, when someone
abuses that same service, that my "personal efforts are
*contributing* to that activity"? Should the postman who delivered
it to you feel guilty? How about the telephone repairman?
Although the FitugMix poster did not put it as tactfully as he
could have, he's right that there are ways to skirt the anonymity
question and trap the "abuser". There is a limit to what you can do
anonymously via e-mail. Eventually, that will not be enough and a
GENUINE "stalker" will do something where he/she can be caught in
conventional ways. Be glad that their caution limits most e-mail
pranksters to e-mailed potshots versus firebombs, drive-by
shootings, slashed tires, etc. If they never progress to that
point, count your blessings. And if they do, God forbid, they can
be caught just like any other stalker. In fact, their e-mailed
prelude will have given you much more time to prepare than the
conventional stalking victim usually has.
> Here's a position, take some potshots at it:
>
> "No one who abuses cars/guns/booze/drugs/anonymity, deserves it"
The abuser doesn't deserve "it"? Deserve WHAT? The price of
freedom is the chance that some will occasionally abuse it. But the
question remains, how do you limit any option, activity, or service
to the "deserving"? How would an operator determine what is "abuse"
in advance so as to prevent it?
> And by "abuse", I do NOT mean "causes harm to themselves", but to
> others who have not given permission for that abuse to be heaped on
> them. So drink yourself to death with a needle in your arm while
> shooting yourself in the head, I don't give a rusty fuck ... but
> should you be allowed to do it to someone else?
Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed or take nasty pills
this morning or something? Maybe people don't want a "rusty fuck"
from you -- especially those without current tetnaus vaccinations.
<g>
> There are folks out there who are actively and deliberately causing
> harm to others under the umbrella of anonymity ... if there were some
> way to stop that, without taking the right to anonymity away from
> everyone, would you do so?
For anyone wishing solutions, they exist. Those who are offended by
anonymous e-mail can request that they be blocked from receiving it.
There are also ways to set up one's mailer software to block or
ignore incoming mail that matches certain patterns.
> If we're smart enough to come up with the means for providing this
> service, aren't we smart enough to figure out some way to keep abusers
> from giving all of us a bad rap, and hurting others while doing
> so?
Other than blocking people from receiving it, upon their request,
what would you suggest? Having remailer operators censoring each
and every piece of mail sent through the server?
> Just wondering ... I see a lot of talk about empowerment in this and
> related ng's, but very little talk about responsibility, and, frankly,
> that kinda scares me.
>
> Ta.
How do you build "responsibility" into an inanimate object or server
to compensate for an occasional lack of responsibility by a user,
whether it be "cars/guns/booze/drugs/anonymity"?
