Re: The Cypherpunk's 1995 Archive has been forged, and what are we going to do about it? (was:Re: Could someone add news of Cypherpunks Archive...
I'm going to put this response onto the Cypherpunks list, so that everybody learns what is going on.
You said, "I don’t think they were intentionally edited by anyone." That may very well be because you haven't checked. Would you know what to look for, if I hadn't told you? Probably not.
I am apparently the first person in about 16 years to have identified this problem. And the reason I discovered it was simply that I was looking for a very specific piece of information that I knew should have been in it: The date of the first appearance of Part 1 of my Assassination Politics essay, which as I had vaguely recalled should have been somewhere in February or March 1995. And parts 2-6 should also have appeared in the 1995 archive.
I didn't place it there: It was copied by a person whose name I don't recall (maybe I never knew it...) from the Digitaliberty email list, run by Bill Frezza. There was a huge amount of discussion of it in mid-1995. You can even find many references in 1996, but essentially nothing in 1995.
I looked for this, and was shocked by what I saw (or more precisely, DIDN'T see): It is quite obvious now what happened: With a tiny number of exceptions in November and December 1995, all messages with the strings "Jim Bell", "jimbell@pacifier.com", " AP ", and "Assassination Politics" simply didn't appear. Someone had intentionally removed them. The fraud had been so minutely done that any appearance of the string ' ap ' that meant "Assassination Politics" had been removed, and the very few that meant "Associated Press" remained. Not an accident. Quite intentional.
I think you owe it to the other users of the Cypherpunks list (then and now) to correct your "I don’t think they were intentionally edited by anyone." to "I agree it's obvious that 1995's archive was forged". And "I will help you to figure out who did it." It only takes your recognition that those strings had to appear, heavily, in the data and nevertheless they did do not. Check for the appearance of those strings in 1996, to see what the "normal" situation should have been. A few minutes of text searching will confirm all this.
You could easily do this by talking to other people who were aware of what happened on the Cypherpunks list in 1995. Declan McCullagh was one; the names of the others are obviously available in the 1995 and 1996 archive itself, including the email addresses (at least, their email addresses then) of those very people. They will all agree that those strings, at the very least, are missing. And you won't find an 'innocent' explanation, no matter how hard you try.
This cannot possibly have been by accident. And you are virtually certain to have been in contact with the person who did that fraud, or at least one who knew what was going on. You probably have archives, possibly on 'retired' hard drives. Or the people who gave the data to you. Eventually, we will find the answer.
With a little searching, I can see that you work in the 'security' field. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Lackey You are, therefore, well-qualified for this task. And you should want to ensure that your reputation is upheld with your handling of this matter.
Jim Bell
On Friday, November 22, 2019, 07:33:24 PM PST, Ryan Lackey
Everybody note that I haven't gotten an answer to this from Ryan Lackey, nor has Declan McCullagh responded to many emails sent his way. Tom Busby seems unusually quiet, as well: Busby, the keeper of the Archive, should be enthusiastically working to figure out what happened that would allow the Archive to have been forged.
The Venona files, as I recall, were dated 2003: Is that correct? If I had a more-efficient editor to search the CP archives, I would study the discussions of the people doing the archive to figure out who was involved, what happened, and when it happened. Can somebody help with this?
The Wayback Machine began in 2001. (but see the reference to 1996, below). Were the files that went into Venona or other to-be-archived data copied onto Wayback? http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/5/19/a-short-on-how-the-wayback-machine...
"How does the Wayback Machine work? Now with over 400 billion webpages indexed, allowing the Internet to be browsed all the way back to 1996, it's an even more compelling question. I've looked several times but I've never found a really good answer."
"Here's some information from a thread on Hacker News. It starts with mmagin, a former Archive employee:"
[end of quote] Jim Bell
On Friday, November 22, 2019, 08:25:40 PM PST, jim bell
On Sun, 24 Nov 2019 22:19:31 +0000 (UTC)
jim bell
Everybody note that I haven't gotten an answer to this from Ryan Lackey, nor has Declan McCullagh responded to many emails sent his way. Tom Busby seems unusually quiet, as well: Busby, the keeper of the Archive, should be enthusiastically working to figure out what happened that would allow the Archive to have been forged.
the 'keeper of the archive' is lackey.
The Venona files, as I recall, were dated 2003: Is that correct?
dated how? The only known thing here is that lackey came up with a bunch of files HE says he got from somebody else, at some point. Of course none of what lackey says is to be regarded as true.
If I had a more-efficient editor to search the CP archives, I would study the discussions of the people doing the archive to figure out who was involved, what happened, and when it happened. Can somebody help with this?
Hm - I'll take a look at 92-98 period. The 2000~2014
So far, as of December 8, 2019, I haven't seen any more comments from Declan McCullagh, Ryan Lackey, nor Tom BusbyIt seems to me that these people (and others?) should be more-enthusiastically pursuing this matter. Aren't some of their reputations in question? At least, people might look askance if they don't at least assist in discovering what happened with the Cypherpunks archive.
I still want people to try to inform prior subscribers to the CP list, first by finding their email addresses, so that we can contact them and tell them what happened, and what we are still trying to learn.
Jim Bell
On Sunday, November 24, 2019, 03:15:26 PM PST, Punk-Stasi 2.0
Everybody note that I haven't gotten an answer to this from Ryan Lackey, nor has Declan McCullagh responded to many emails sent his way. Tom Busby seems unusually quiet, as well: Busby, the keeper of the Archive, should be enthusiastically working to figure out what happened that would allow the Archive to have been forged.
the 'keeper of the archive' is lackey.
The Venona files, as I recall, were dated 2003: Is that correct?
dated how? The only known thing here is that lackey came up with a bunch of files HE says he got from somebody else, at some point. Of course none of what lackey says is to be regarded as true.
If I had a more-efficient editor to search the CP archives, I would study the discussions of the people doing the archive to figure out who was involved, what happened, and when it happened. Can somebody help with this?
Hm - I'll take a look at 92-98 period. The 2000~2014
On 12/8/19 8:50 PM, jim bell requested list members to spam and stalk people who bailed from this list over two decades ago because scumbags like him made this cyber-anarchist list useless as anything but a spam collector.
I still want people to try to inform prior subscribers to the CP list, first by finding their email addresses, so that we can contact them and tell them what happened, and what we are still trying to learn.
Jim Bell
Taser is a loser Taser is a loser Taser is a loser -------- Original Message -------- On Dec 9, 2019, 9:39 AM, Razer wrote:
On 12/8/19 8:50 PM, jim bell requested list members to spam and stalk people who bailed from this list over two decades ago because scumbags like him made this cyber-anarchist list useless as anything but a spam collector.
I still want people to try to inform prior subscribers to the CP list, first by finding their email addresses, so that we can contact them and tell them what happened, and what we are still trying to learn.
Jim Bell
On Mon, 9 Dec 2019 04:50:42 +0000 (UTC)
jim bell
I still want people to try to inform prior subscribers to the CP list, first by finding their email addresses,
did you try gilmore? http://www.toad.com/gnu/ ...and the nazi-troskyte-randroid james donald? jamesd@echeque.com I think i've seen a couple of posts from him somewhere...
http://web.archive.org/web/19961105222622/http://www.hks.net:80/cpunks/index... "March 18, 1996 The cypherpunks and coderpunks pages will be unavailable for the next couple of days as we switch over to a new line. We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause. June 06, 1996 Not to worry, we know the archives are still down. Just a bit longer, Please be patient." haha
On Sunday, November 24, 2019, 04:37:25 PM PST, Punk-Stasi 2.0
http://web.archive.org/web/19961105222622/http://www.hks.net:80/cpunks/index...
"March 18, 1996 The cypherpunks and coderpunks pages will be unavailable for the next couple of days as we switch over to a new line. We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause.
June 06, 1996 Not to worry, we know the archives are still down. Just a bit longer, Please be patient."
Did you locate when that eventually appeared? Jim Bell
On Mon, 25 Nov 2019 22:51:38 +0000 (UTC)
jim bell
On Sunday, November 24, 2019, 04:37:25 PM PST, Punk-Stasi 2.0
wrote: http://web.archive.org/web/19961105222622/http://www.hks.net:80/cpunks/index...
"March 18, 1996 The cypherpunks and coderpunks pages will be unavailable for the next couple of days as we switch over to a new line. We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause.
June 06, 1996 Not to worry, we know the archives are still down. Just a bit longer, Please be patient."
Did you locate when that eventually appeared? Jim Bell
Here's the first time I can see that url being mentioned as source of an archive :
"
From: "J. Kent Hastings"
On Monday, November 25, 2019, 04:09:34 PM PST, Punk-Stasi 2.0
On Sunday, November 24, 2019, 04:37:25 PM PST, Punk-Stasi 2.0
wrote: http://web.archive.org/web/19961105222622/http://www.hks.net:80/cpunks/index...
"March 18, 1996
The cypherpunks and coderpunks pages will be unavailable for the next couple of days as we switch over to a new line. We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause.
June 06, 1996 Not to worry, we know the archives are still down. Just a bit longer, Please be patient."
Did you locate when that eventually appeared? Jim Bell
Here's the first time I can see that url being mentioned as source of an archive :
"From: "J. Kent Hastings"
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 95 01:07:38 PDT Subject: Re: (Fwd) 1995 Nanotechnology Conference
Tim says that quantum codebreaking and nanotech ain't gonna happen, because of things he explained in the past on the list, now available in the archive. I found a great Web version of the cypherpunks archive at http: //www.hks.net/cpunks/index.html and will indeed catch up on the quantum coherence subject."
Also, did you see this message?
https://lists.cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/2019-November/077885.html
I quoted there a couple of messages from lackey, dated 1997, in which he says he has a complete archive. "Complete" at that time included all of 1995. Now apparently he says he's lost part of it... Well, I am including Ryan Lackey on this matter. Dear Mr. Lackey, It appears that you CAN help us. You can enlighten us on the history around the time described in this material above. At one point, you informed people that you were in possession of the as-yet entire archives. Later, however, you seemed to have changed your mind: Perhaps you had said you "lost" part of the Cypherpunks archive. Could you explain what you meant when you said you had the complete archive? Why did you later say something akin to having 'lost' some of it? Was it really lost, or perhaps you merely discovered that a portion of it had been missing?My observation of those files indicate that almost every email was lost between February 14, 1995, and July 10, 1995. And, of course, virtually every email containing:1. "Jim bell" OR2. "jimbell@pacifier.com" OR3. " ap " OR4. "assassination politics" Was lost between the dates of February 14, 1995 and December 31, 1995. To see an alternate reality, look for the same text strings in the 1996 Cypherpunks archive. Such strings appear very commonly. I believe that once you confirm the essentially complete absense of those strings, you will be satisified that the 1995 Archive data was heavily tampered with, and the person or persons responsible should be identified. Jim Bell
From: Ryan Lackey
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 93 22:53:39 BST From: whitaker@eternity.demon.co.uk (Russell E. Whitaker) Reply-To: whitaker@eternity.demon.co.uk To: cypherpunks@toad.com Cc: whitaker@eternity.demon.co.uk
and the present. I'm also feeling tempted to incorporate the archives of
some of the offshoot mailing lists, like coderpunks, etc.
Does anyone know of a good source for the messages before that one? How
many were there, approximately? If there are a bunch of them and you can
merge them with mine, I'll be happy to send you a cd of the result.
If enough people want to buy CDs of the data, I'll set up an order page,
establish pricing, etc. Right now, for me to make a CD requires buying
media and doing it at the media lab, unless I buy a drive, so the cost
is somewhat dependent upon how many people are interested. If someone wants
to use corporate or government money to overpay for a cd so I can buy
a cd-r writer and make it cheaper for everyone else, I'll think fondly of
whatever organization you represent :)
Utterly ignoring the copyright issues in the interest of getting wide
dispersal, especially since it's unlikely anyone cares since no one will
get rich selling cypherpunks cd-roms,
Ryan
(the last time I wished for something in parenthetical postscript it worked.
Wish granting service, will you please make the people of the world
clueful enough to replace governmental/military force with cryptography? Or
convince one of my professors that they should sign a blank thesis?)
--
Ryan Lackey
rdl@mit.edu
http://mit.edu/rdl/
----
From: Ryan Lackey
(There is, by the way, a project simmering along to put the 5 years of Cypherpunks traffic on a Web site...)
I have everything but the first 8 months or so of traffic in the process of going up on the web soon. (Stupid deadline appeared which put this off for a few hours). If the first 8 months were in someplace I could find them, then there would be a nice complete archive no longer simmering, but up on the web, ready for people to mirror. Dr. Dobbs' Journal sells a Cryptography CD-ROM with AC v 2, etc. on it for $99, and combined with a Cypherpunks CD-ROM containing list archives of cypherpunks, coderpunks, cryptography@c2.org, and maybe some other stuff for $50 or so, there would be 2-cd solution. I'm pretty sure all 5 years fit on one cd-rom -- I've been using 4 years as an eternity dds dataset, along with some other stuff, and I think it is less than 500mb, although one of the problems with my current eternity file system under linux is that there is no way of telling how big a directory is (yay VFS kludges). -- Ryan Lackey rdl@mit.edu http://mit.edu/rdl/
participants (4)
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jim bell
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Punk-Stasi 2.0
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Razer
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rooty