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4 September 1998
See related file on "Toto":
http://jya.com/cej-busted.htm
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 05:52:06 +0200
From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
Subject: Space Aliens Return my Drugs!
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Space Aliens Return my Drugs!
A lot of the recent traffic about Toto has struck me by
its utterly clueless, even juvenile nature. I'm especially
disappointed in Tim, who shows that even a person of
significant intellect and education can become just
another member of the unwashed lynch mob when government
rings the Pavlovian bell. A lot of you should be taken
out and soundly spanked for displaying a preschooler's
(or liberal's) naivete in regarding moves and
manipulations by the most experienced and amoral
manipulator of all time: the U.S. government.
What's wrong here includes:
* Presuming that the person in custody is Toto
He may or may not be Toto, and the posts we may
think of in connection with Toto may or may not
have been made by Toto, much less the person in
custody. The authorities may think they have Toto
but may have only tenuous means of proving it.
It may suit the person in custody to say, "Never
heard of any such person/pet/thing/place." Meanwhile
clueless posters to c-p are not even bothering to
_wink_ at each other as they leap great chasms of
missing data to identify the person in custody as
Toto and take as gospel the first post by someone
claiming to be his sister. Only Tim even raised the
suggestion that Alia's initial post should be
treated with skepticism until proven out.
It would have been far more useful to the defense
of the person in custody if, instead of presuming
that he is Toto, there had been a consistent list
content alluding to "Carl Johnson (or John Doe, or
whoever), victim of numerous forged messages by
numerous persons unknown."
* Asking people close to the alleged Toto to make
admissions or give what could be construed to be
evidentiary statements
How would you like to have your legal defense
strategy undermined by people asking for and
getting answers to questions about what you have
"done," and in a public forum, to boot? Morons!
* Presuming that the person in custody and/or Toto
actually committed any act or acts worthy of
charges and/or incarceration
I don't know what the person in custody did or did
not do. Guess what? You_ probably don't know, either.
But if you _happen_ to know, and you say so in
public, or _sound_ in public like you may know, you
may very well get a subpoena and/or yourself become
a target of investigation.
In any case, you don't help the person in custody
by proving how clever you are or showering us with
your self-elevation in the form of condescending
and patronizing statements that you are "not
surprised" or that you "thought all along that
something like this would happen."
This is the stage at which many dissidents in iron-
fisted toto-cracies (couldn't help that) have found
themselves when the first crackdowns occurred after
periods of "openness" or "liberalism." It is
very sad that cypherpunks are displaying the very
same innocence that cost soviet and Chinese dissidents
their lives and/or freedom before those learned the
hard way what they were up against.
This is not a game.
You _are_ being surveilled, and everything you post
in a public forum _is_ being saved for possible
future use against you or someone important to you.
* Presuming that the government doesn't lie or
set up intended targets to take a fall
I was disappointed by the reactions of many on this
list when Jim Bell went down, but perhaps some
moderated their wild suppositions, insinuations
and baseless, conclusory malthinking due to some
feeling of kinship, however remote, that is not
present to the same degree with respect to Toto.
What is going on now, though, is exactly like 75-
IQ neighbors opining to clueless reporters, "I
always thought there was something fishy about
him!" or "It's sad, but it doesn't surprise me
that they're carting him off to a psychiatric
hospital for 60 days-to-30 years of evaluation."
Get real! If the person in custody were a left-wing
army ant, _all_ persons of similar stripe would be
entirely unified in refusing to acknowledge _any_
culpability on his part, and would instead be
singing the accusations of government conspiracy,
malfeasance and complete lack of good faith in
10,000-part harmony.
This is the great difference between the collectivists
and the libertarians / conservatives: The collectivists
instinctively understand public relations, "solidarity,"
and the need to be relentless and untiring in defense
of their own and in unceasing accusation and attack
against their opposition. Libertarians and
conservatives, in contrast, are often mere children,
and not very bright ones at that, in dealing with
the left and with organized government policies of
repression and propaganda. In this regard there is
virtually no difference between most conservatives
and libertarians.
(continued in Part 2)
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 06:57:21 +0200
From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
Subject: Space Aliens Return my Drugs!
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Space Aliens Return my Drugs!
Part 2
The ability of the collectivists to maintain their
party PR line with straight faces even in the light
of overwhelming contrary evidence is truly astonishing.
Witness the defenders of Clinton who held to the
party line and attacked his detractors until the very
moment he admitted what they had been denying. Even
now many of them continue to try to explain it all
away. While one might condemn such complete lack of
principles among Clinton's supporters, one should
also observe that the tactic of unwavering support
for one's allies and unceasing attack against one's
opponents is very productive of useful obfuscation
and delay, and gives the observing public the basis
for a "reasonable doubt" no matter what the truth of
the matter. The ability of libertarians and
conservatives to give up their own and engage in
petty "I knew that all along!" games is also quite
astonishing. Since we don't _know_ the truth of this
matter, why give the entire game away in advance?
Morons!
* Presuming that because the government suggests,
alleges or accepts the possibility of mental
problems that there is a real possibility of
mental problems
Americans are singularly incapable of applying the
lessons of the world to their own provincial
existence. Many of the same people who believe
themselves quite well informed about the soviet
psychiatric penal system exhibit utter cluelessness
when confronted with signs of the same in the U.S.
The possibility of political psychiatric imprisonment
or psychiatric undercutting of the legal system in
the U.S. is beyond the ken of Americans. They cannot
even bring themselves to confront documented evidence
of systematic and institutionalized _physical_ abuse
in the criminal justice system, much less the
nightmare of soviet style political penal psychiatry.
If the U.S. federal penal system will allow former
U.S. Representative Hansen to suffer such gross
physical hardship while chained in a transport
vehicle for hours and days and deny him medical
treatment such that he has to endure the ultimate
torture of having to pull out his _own_ toenails
with pliers, to save his legs, though, do you really
think the accusatory, pretrial, trial, posttrial and
penal systems can be trusted not to abuse the public
relations black hole of psychiatric evaluation and
"treatment?" Did you just fall off the turnip truck?
Morons!
Someone claiming to be joe harlin wrote:
> Alia,
>
> I am a little confused.
>
> What exactly did you brother do and what would you
> like us to do?
What you mean, "We," kimosabe? You appear to be too new
to have any clue about what is happening. If you had a
clue, you wouldn't ask. And if you had a brain, you
wouldn't ask "What did your brother do?" Instead, you
_might_ have asked, "What is your brother accused of
having done?" Are you really that stupid, or are you a
government stooge trying to shave every angle available
and draw evidentiary material out of someone in distress
under the guise of wishing to be helpful? That would be
right in character for a government sleazeball.
Moron (or worse)!
Someone with really good email forging skills should let
loose a large flock of messages from Joe, Alia, Jim
Choate, and others, thoroughly confusing what might be
taken by authorities to be statements against interest
or evidentiary statements about other persons. As it is,
several of you have set yourselves up to hear your own
words used against the person in custody or even against
_you_. Boy, will you ever be surprised! Boy, are you
ever _dumb_!
Someone claiming to be Alia wrote:
> He is in medical lockup and isolation, without the meds
> he needs for his condition of Tourettes' syndrome. He
> is suffering but not incoherent.
Once her credibility is confirmed, have any of the rocket
scientists of the c-p list thought about alerting Amnesty
International and the various human rights organizations
in and out of the U.S. that supposedly deal with issues
of political prisoners, maltreatment, and denial of human
and civil rights? Or is this similar to Irish insurgents
so accustomed to hundreds of years of British atrocities
that when one of them is executed on a back road by a
British hit squad they shrug and never think of calling
attention to it?
Someone claiming to be Dr. (evidently, anyway) Frederick
Burroughs wrote:
> So, a federal officer incurred the wrath of toto, and
> felt threatened?
We don't know that, Frederick. At the point when you wrote
this we didn't even know if there was anything to the
report of an arrest at all, and nothing whatsoever about
the invention or stretch of the feds to construe something
written by Toto or the person in custody or someone else
as a "threat."
> As for the esteemed mr. toto: Some supervised medication,
> as a condition of his parole, is highly recommended.
So you've convicted him already? That's convenient for the
government, isn't it? And you've exercised your professional
medical education and experience by remote control to
diagnose Toto, or the person in custody you've never seen,
and who may or may not be the person you think of as Toto,
and prescribe "supervised medication?" Moron!
(continued in Part 3)
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 05:51:34 +0200
From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
Subject: Space Aliens Return my Drugs!
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Space Aliens Return my Drugs!
Part 3
Someone claiming to be Eric Cordian wrote:
> I've always been very fond of Toto, under all of his
> various manifestations. Although some considered his
> use of bandwidth excessive, a great deal of what he
> wrote was very clever satire which frequently rose to
> the level of genuine wit.
I agree, though considerations of bandwidth date you to
the era in which bandwidth was expensive, and before
technological advances in bandwidth and routing capacity
multiplied data rates and dollar effectiveness by
several orders of magnitude. But I digress.
What does what you wrote have to do with the person in
custody, hmmm? Leaping rather prematurely to a conclusion
on the basis of almost no data, weren't you? Do you know
Alia? Do you know that the alleged Alia is in fact the
sister of the person in custody, or of Toto? Do you know
for a fact that there is only one person in the U.S. and
Canada who uses the nom de plume of "Toto?" Do you know
that that person is the one in custody? Do you know
how many persons have contributed to the body of postings
attributable to the nominal Toto, and which ones were
written by which persons? I think not. Moron!
> It seems our enemies are attacking Cypherpunks by
> picking off people like Toto and Jim Bell, who may
> be less circumspect in stating their opinions, and
> more easily goaded into petty illegal acts committed
> out of justifiable anger.
We don't know that any of the Totos or the person in
custody committed any illegal acts whatsoever. We don't
know that Jim Bell committed any illegal acts. All we
really know in Jim Bell's case is that he pleaded
guilty to some charges, something that these days is
_no_ indication of anything other than caving in to
avoid the deeper downside risk attendant with defending
one's self. Part of the process of prostrating one's
self and appeasing the federal system is carrying the
lie out of court and into the public eye. You've seen
a number of prosecuted public figures do this through
recent decades, even crying and begging forgiveness
in public. If that rang false, you were right: some of
them no doubt pleaded guilty simply to cut their losses,
but humiliating one's self is a prescribed part of the
game. For this reason, even personal messages from
the accused accepting responsibility and admitting to
having "made mistakes" should be discounted. When you
elect to bite the head of the Rat of the Guilty Plea,
you have to bite it all off, and chew it all up, no
matter how unpleasant. The body is the dessert, which
they will serve up to you in rotting pieces for the
rest of your life, but mostly in the period before
you finally emerge to some semblance of liberty free
of reports, visits and rules. They will always keep
a paw or a bit of putrid tail to shove in your nose
if you ever get too uppity in your future life of
quiet humility.
_Many_ completely innocent people plead guilty these
days when faced with the overwhelming burden of
defending against a corrupt government that has
bottomless pockets and plays with a stacked deck.
Outside the legalism that a guilty plea closes the
issue forever, there is no longer any real
significance in a guilty plea for those outside the
case trying to understand what really happened or
who really did what.
Someone claiming to be Tim May wrote:
> After all, he/she/it has a history of spoofing,
> forging, and using dozens of posting names. Some
> names he/she/it has used: Truthmonger, Linda, C.J.
Bad logic. Better to have observed, "There have been
numerous apparent sources of material loosely associated
with the persistent identity, 'Toto.' We have no idea
how many Totos there really are, or if the person in
custody has any connection even with as many as a single
one of them."
> ...he sent out several tortured missives...
Alas, Tim has no idea who sent what. He is shotgunning
conclusions all over the landscape and inverting the
actual (many Toto message from many different sources)
to the conclusory ("he/she/it has a history of...using
dozens of posting names"). Even were he able to achieve
certainty regarding the email origin of a given message,
he has no idea who was sitting at that computer composing
it, or even if it was fewer than a full committee of
laughing imposters.
> It became obvious that someone was probably on
> medication and probably on some kind of disability
> ...
> Stuff that showed strong signs of MPD, ADD, and all
> the usual Cypherpunks dementias.
The best of acting and writing is the creation of something
indistinguishable from the thing it purports to be. For
that fact to be lost on a 75-IQ neighbor is lamentable,
but comprehensible. For it to be lost on Tim May is
inexcusable.
> But I will not be too surprised to hear that he/she
> is under psychiatric care/imprisonment.
This could be interpreted several ways, but the chief
candidate is the ever-present ego and insecurity in most
of us that requires that we clarify that we were not
"taken in." When anyone goes down hard, there is never
any scarcity of people salvaging their self-esteem and
imagined reputation by loudly proclaiming their prescient
knowledge that "it was inevitable." The wise man, though,
shuts up to observe what will happen next. The fool
assures all who will listen that he "always knew" there
was something wrong with the guy just hauled off in the
paddy wagon.
(continued in Part 4)
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 07:17:54 +0200
From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
Subject: Space Aliens Return my Drugs!
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Space Aliens Return my Drugs!
Part 4
The second candidate interpretation is that Tim knows well
that we have sub rosa psychiatric gulags here in the U.S.,
and he will not be surprised if the government takes its
cue from all the fodder given them in Toto posts to put
the alleged Toto through the psychiatric pretrial process.
After all, it gains them a non-judicial pretrial sentence
of indeterminate incarceration for the accused, just what
governments have always loved so, and what the Constitution
was intended, among other things, to prevent.
No other interpretation, as has been suggested in other
posts, is reasonable. No one (except Jim Choate) could
possibly imagine that Tim was advocating psychiatric gulags.
Kudos to Jim Burnes for one of the only sane posts in the
wake of this news.
Someone claiming to be John Young wrote:
> Would anyone know more about Toto's being in AZ?
> Is it connected to DEFCON? He sent here a wad of posts
> about that do.
Thanks, John. Doing the government's homework for them.
Someone claiming to be Tim May wrote:
> However, those who live by the sword....
Bullshit! Perhaps when they come for you we should all
nod sagely and let Bob Hettinga lead us in a chorus of
saying that you invited it on yourself and that we
knew all along that something like this would happen.
Think about it... if the government knew that everyone
would swallow whatever Waco or Ruby Ridge PR line they
put out about you, wouldn't they be more likely to come
for you in the confidence that they could demonize you
and get away with anything at all? Wouldn't they be
less likely to risk it if they knew that any PR line
they put out would be instantly and profoundly attacked,
and their motivations and methods severely criticized
and questioned? Do unto others...
> In my opinion, he or she has obvious mental problems.
The exercise now before any interested parties with too
much time on their hands is to do some creative writing
a la Toto that will similarly convince Tim that the
author has "obvious mental problems." Shouldn't be too
hard, since he clearly believes most of what he reads.
Moron!
> Unlike Bell, I just can't rally any particular support
> for Toto. His crimes, if any, would seem to be completely
> unrelated to anything he has ever said on Cypherpunks.
Bullshit! In the first place, it is clearly incorrect that
none of the Toto or seemingly related posts could possibly
attract destructive official notice. In the second place,
this is a near-perfect analog to the issue of list
moderation. If Tim is willing to let long-time participants
be picked off like this, with his rendering or withholding
of support filtered through a subjective issue or content
filter, then he should also be complacent about messages
being picked off by list moderation and filtering at the
source, but he is not.
I would offer this paraphrase to some members of the list
as the way they can explain present and future events to
future generations:
First they came for Jim Bell, but his AP was too
radical for me to support in public, the opinions
of others being as important to me as they were, so
I said nothing. Then they came for Toto, but although
I had laughed at his creative wit and even replied
to some of his contributions to the list, I thought
him too bizarre, and not really a cypherpunk, so
I said nothing... When they came for me... (etc.)
Someone claiming to be Lucky Green wrote:
> I can confirm that Toto attended Defcon. I saw him there.
Thanks, Lucky! Now you can be subpoenaed, if need be, to
place him there, should that technicality become an issue.
Someone claiming to be Jim Choate wrote:
> How he gets access to the list is he literaly begs,
> borrows, or steals (ie hacks) accounts for access.
Thanks, Jim! Now you, too, can be subpoenaed, if the feds
don't already have enough gratuitous charges with which
to beat the person in custody into legal submission. If
you're _really_lucky_ they will have gone to the same
schools as you, and will misspell your name and your
address and you will never hear from them.
Someone claiming to be Tim May wrote:
> (And we don't know that "Carl Johnson" = Toto/
> Scaremonger/Linda Reed, do we?
Well, thank heaven for small crumbs! Tim is right,
though he understates the case. We have no fucking
_clue_ what's really going on or who is in custody
or what posts are at issue or what connection the
person in custody might, in reality, have with them.
> It would not be out of line for Toto/Colonel Parker
> to use real cases as part of one of his elaborate
> spoofs.
Exactly, as I have no doubt time will quite clearly show.
> I'm not leaning in this direction, but I will wait
> until independent confirmation develops further before
> assuming Toto/Linda is actually under arrest.)
Oops! Hedging those self-esteem bets of the wise sage again.
We can't risk anyone thinking we may have been blind-sided
or taken in, can we? We _must_ show how clever we are,
since that is far, far more important than monkey-wrenching
a growing government campaign to criminalize those who
exercise First Amendment rights in unapproved ways.
(continued in Part 5)
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 05:49:32 +0200
From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
Subject: Space Aliens Return my Drugs!
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Space Aliens Return my Drugs!
Part 5
Someone claiming to be Alia wrote:
> C.J. was arrested for postings he made involving some
> kind of betting on the death of certain listed IRS
> agents.
Wonderful! Whose fucking side are you on? Why don't you
take a bit of good advice and clear these statements
with C.J.'s attorney before making them in public.
I am quite sure that you have no fucking _idea_ what
the person in custody did or did not post. If you were
in his presence and have complete understanding of the
Internet such that you have very good reason to believe
that what you saw was actual posting, you should
certainly not _say_ so in public. In the absence of that
it is a fair presumption that you were not in his
presence, or that if you were, you are not qualified to
say whether what you think you saw was actually posted
anywhere. It's probably fair to say that you have no
clue what your alleged brother did or did not do,
unless perhaps you can testify that he was with you
at certain times on certain dates and definitely not
active on the Internet at those times. You might think
about that.
Also (and it's a big "also"), what you mention about
accusations of "postings he made involving some
kind of betting on the death of certain listed IRS
agents" is revealing of the government's case. It
sounds like the constipated, squirrel-minded approach
that is characteristic of the feds, but especially
typical of the very narrow-minded and low-IQ IRS.
Their horrified approach to AP has been to magnify
what was clearly a First Amendment expression and
allege, regardless of how thinly they have to do it,
that Jim Bell was actually operating an AP betting
system, a preposterous suggestion in the eyes of
anyone even remotely familiar with the enormous
technical and other obstacles to be overcome before
such a system could be fielded.
That's on a par with accusing the weirdos who
periodically show up at the White House to pick up
the Prez for their "return home" to another planet
with espionage for being agents of a foreign power.
It's like charging libertarian or collectivist
writers with planning to overthrow the government.
Geez! But it's also typical that the IRS would look
to invent conspiracy to lard over the top of their
magnified molehill. Under it all, when the dust
settles, we may find that someone claiming to be
Toto (or whoever) posted some "Yeah!" stuff in
response to something Jim Bell published, and the
(rumored) claim of ""postings he made involving
some kind of betting on the death of certain listed
IRS agents" may be no more meaningful than the
similarly over-magnified remarks that get people
into trouble in airports these days.
Raymond Mereniuk wrote:
> Toto, or whatever he called himself, gave us a few
> clues.
He did? Did I miss a memo? Is Toto a "he?" Is Toto a
single, solitary person? Do you know that Toto is not
a loose network of practical jokers? Do you know that
Toto is not a dare or a bet taken up by someone
completely different than the Toto about whom you
think you have clues? Do you know anything at all?
> Some of his stories about hassles with local law
> enforcement tell a story of a person with many
> unresolved issues from his past.
Isn't this a bit like trying to psychoanalyze Stephen King
by reading his novels? Or Ernest Hemingway? Or Victor
Hugo? Or the ghost writers of Hot Letters to the Editor?
You may _presume_ that Toto(s) was(were) writing about
real things, but you really have no fucking clue.
joe harlin wrote:
> Alia,
>
> What was he charged with?
>
> Does he have a criminal record?
>
> Where did he make these postings?
>
> Do they think he had anything to do with the
> death of IRS agents.
This guy smells more rotten every time he posts!
This is the second time he has tried to elicit
evidentiary information in a public forum. This
time he slips it in between several non-evidentiary
questions. "Where did he make these postings?"
Good Gawd almighty!
Also, Joe's question is strangely aligned with the
peculiar, paranoid, siege mode of thinking of the
IRS, as if anyone with even half a brain would expose
themselves to serious risk by taking any actual
steps against low-life scum who are better dealt
with by abolishing their entire agency and maybe
_later_ instituting civil/human rights inquiries
with the object of convicting and imprisoning the
thugs who have abused so many people, Americans
and others, driving many to ruin and some to
suicide, while generally suppressing the productive
endeavors of all persons with any ties to U.S.
tax jurisdiction. Only the imbeciles at the IRS
would think it credible that anyone would waste
their time going after those cockroaches on an
unlawful, individual basis.
(continued in Part 6)
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 06:45:23 +0200
From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
Subject: Space Aliens Return my Drugs!
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Space Aliens Return my Drugs!
Part 6
There has never been any known implementation of
AP, nor is it credible that Jim Bell or Toto or
anyone else could possibly have engaged in any
acts that could be thought by any reasonable
person to have had any possibility of leading
to an implementation of AP. If someone chats
about flying to Mars, should the INS be alert
to the possibility of border infractions? If a
nobody chats about setting up a bank, should the
bankers of the world quake in their boots?
The obstacles to setting up a working AP system
are substantial, and unlikely to be addressed
as a practical matter by a Jim Bell or a Toto
or the person in custody. Anonymous digital
payment systems are nowhere near implementation
on any scale that would make them useful for
ordering a pizza, much less an assassination.
Major technical and legal issues that would
arise in the face of an AP implementation were
never adequately addressed. It remained a
fantasy, much as the utopias of collectivists,
libertarians and anarchists remain fantasies.
A science fiction writer once a story of one
man's successful search for a planet called
Utopia. On arriving at the almost unknown,
isolated place he was greeted enthusiastically
by the Mayor who, after some time acquainting
the newcomer with the way things worked on
Utopia, bestowed the office of Mayor on the
startled immigrant. Only then did the new
fellow learn that the medallion he now wore
was an explosive, set off automatically by a
certain vote of no confidence expressed by
citizens at curbside electronic voting booths.
Should the author of that short story be hounded,
surveilled, arrested, charged with "threatening a
federal officer," and packed off for psych
evaluation? Should he? Don't you think he talked
about the theme of his story with other people,
both before and after publication? Don't you think
it at least possible that he thought such a system
might be a workable alternative to the utter lack
of accountability we have today? Wouldn't he
probably meet all the qualifications for prosecution
that Jim Bell did? Or the person now in custody?
What the government is really signaling with these
arrests and the additional ones sure to follow, is
a pitiful cry for help: "Stop us before we abuse our
power again!" Like a troubled child, they are
virtually begging to be disciplined and shown the
natural order of things, and will escalate their
misbehavior until suitably chastised. The difficulty
and severity of where this will all end up is
determined by how far The People let it go.
I'm awfully sorry to have been so dry and technical
about all this, but tough shit. These are both silly
and sobering events. We now return you to your
regularly scheduled feed slop.
Toto
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 22:43:29 -0700
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
Subject: Re: Space Aliens Return my Drugs!
At 8:52 PM -0700 9/3/98, Anonymous wrote:
>Space Aliens Return my Drugs!
>
>A lot of the recent traffic about Toto has struck me by
>its utterly clueless, even juvenile nature. I'm especially
>disappointed in Tim, who shows that even a person of
>significant intellect and education can become just
>another member of the unwashed lynch mob when government
>rings the Pavlovian bell. A lot of you should be taken
>out and soundly spanked for displaying a preschooler's
>(or liberal's) naivete in regarding moves and
>manipulations by the most experienced and amoral
>manipulator of all time: the U.S. government.
I call them as I see them. Always have, hopefully always will. I've thought
several folks were irritating flakes, including Detweiler, Bell, Toto (*),
Vulis, Guy "Information Security and Vulis Terminator," and more recently,
Bill Payne.
(Mr. Anonymous makes much of us not knowing who Toto is, not knowing if the
Toto of 1997 is the Toto of 1998, if Toto is a committee, if Toto is
Truthmonger, if Toto is Linda Reed, if Linda Reed is really Linda Reed, and
so on in an ever-widening spiral of unknowns. Indeed, we don't know who
Toto is. I said as much in some of my comments. And I personally don't know
if Jim Bell is "really" Jim Bell, and so for all the names mentioned above,
none of whom have I met, at least not to my knowledge. Saying we can't
prove Toto is Toto is Carl Johnson is Alia's brother is Truthmonger and so
on is not very profound. I don't know if there's a guy in jail in Tucson. I
don't know if Carl Johnson has any connection to the "Nexus previously
known as Toto." To claim that nothing can be said because nothing is known
is solipsistic nonsense.)
I didn't rush to Bell's defense when he was busted for allegedly dumping
noxious chemicals in IRS offices. At least not just because he was a
subscriber to some list (assuming we believe the Jim Bell arrested was in
fact the same person as the Jim Bell who posted here, something Mr.
Anonymous would presumably have us doubt until some postive proof was
presented, and so on in his Mad Hatter world of nothing being believable.).
I called Jim Bell's strategy nutty long before he was busted...let us not
forget that his initial "assassination market" was a variant of an old
fiction scheme (by either Joseph Conrad or Jack London, as someone pointed
out a few years back) and it lacked any crypto component. Hal Finney
steered Bell toward my own "anonymous contract killings" scenarios,
developed in my writings from 1987 onward, and Bell attempted to integrate
some nebulous notions of using untraceable digital money for his scheme.
There are many more aspects to Bell's case than can be discussed here, at
least here by me. Many of us have criticized aspects, as we understand
them, of Bell's case, ranging from the inappropriate production of his
"Assassination Politics" rants during his trial (or at least the pre-trial
publicity, and the post-trial media coverage) to Bell's own decision
(apparently) to accept severe probabation requirements as part of a plea
agreement.
But enough about Bell. (Or the person we think is Bell. Or the committee we
think may be using the name Bell. Satisfied, Mr. Anonymous? Or the
Committee Writing as Anonymous?)
>What's wrong here includes:
>
> * Presuming that the person in custody is Toto
I urged caution in accepting the initial claim from anyone, least of which
someone named "Alia" (which may turn out to be a real name...Dejanews and
such show a writer name Alia Johnson, living in Berkeley at one point, and
writing on feminist issues...whether this is the same Alia Johnson, and
whether she is related to Carl Johnson, and whether Carl Johnson is related
to the Entity Sometimes Known as Toto, and so on and so on, are all issues
I won't presume to resolve here.)
But assuming this report is true, and that Carl Johnson = Toto ("our" Toto,
as we understand things), why should I jump to his defense? This was my
point.
> He may or may not be Toto, and the posts we may
> think of in connection with Toto may or may not
> have been made by Toto, much less the person in
> custody. The authorities may think they have Toto
> but may have only tenuous means of proving it.
> It may suit the person in custody to say, "Never
> heard of any such person/pet/thing/place." Meanwhile
> clueless posters to c-p are not even bothering to
> _wink_ at each other as they leap great chasms of
> missing data to identify the person in custody as
> Toto and take as gospel the first post by someone
> claiming to be his sister. Only Tim even raised the
> suggestion that Alia's initial post should be
> treated with skepticism until proven out.
I raised it for the reasons cited. That Defcon had just happened made me
think that perhaps the "real" Toto (I will not jump into the chasm of
solipsistic "we can't know anything") was having a laugh at us over this
report from Alias Alia.
However, not being very solipsistic and being of an engineering mind, I'm
now pretty much convinced of these things:
* that one Carl E. Johnson is in custody
* that Carl E. Johnson has writte much stuff under the pseudonyms we all
know of, and probably some not being mentioned here
* that the authorities may be convinced he was planning a killing or a
bombing of an agent or office of the government (some reports have linked
the RCMP to this issue, but the charges quoted mention the Pacific
Northwest of the U.S.)
Again, Mr. Anonymous argues that nothing has been proved, that maybe Alia
Johnson is Bob Dole's crazy niece, that maybe the Carl Johnson in custody
is the Olympic track star, and that Toto is a committee of intelligent dogs
living in Oz. Maybe. And maybe everything _is_ an illusion. Good logic for
Johnny Cockroach to apply on the O.J. jury, to further befuddle them, but
not persuasive to me.
Did Toto threaten anyone? Don't know...haven't seen anyone present
documents, even documents allegedly written by Toto. Did Toto threaten to
bomb the RCMP? Ditto.
What evidence the Feds and/or the RCMP have is unknown to me. Clearly they
will have to _prove_ charges in a court of law. Unless the Entity Known to
Some as Toto pleads out. Which, as the Bell case showed, is not out of the
question.
>
> It would have been far more useful to the defense
> of the person in custody if, instead of presuming
> that he is Toto, there had been a consistent list
> content alluding to "Carl Johnson (or John Doe, or
> whoever), victim of numerous forged messages by
> numerous persons unknown."
It ain't my job, or anyone else's job on this list or any other list, to
"defend" the person in custody by using such tortured language as you
suggest.
The person in custody (Carl Johnson, Toto, Dorothy, whatever) will not be
found guilty because someone on this list claims he or she _believes_ that
person is "Toto." That will be a matter for the evidence to support, not
hearsay from us, based on little knowledge to boot.
(Though, as I said before, I am leaning toward the notion that the person
in custody is Carl Johnson, who is the same person known to us mostly as
Toto. No, I cannot prove this. Nor am I expected, required, or able to. So
sue me.)
> * Asking people close to the alleged Toto to make
> admissions or give what could be construed to be
> evidentiary statements
It's a free country. We can ask any damned questions we like. If someone
who claims to be the sister of an incarcerated person also claims various
things about this person, why not ask her questions?
> How would you like to have your legal defense
> strategy undermined by people asking for and
> getting answers to questions about what you have
> "done," and in a public forum, to boot? Morons!
Your logic is flawed. Why are _we_ the "morons" when we are not the ones in
custody, not the ones giving out information on our alleged brother, and so
on?
You (hope you don't mind the personalized "you," even though I have no way
of proving "you" are not a committee, or the output of an AI program) seem
to think "we" are supposed to help defend this person in custody through
tortuous phrasing and through solidarity in commenting on his case.
Mighty strange, espeically as you have been arguing that this Carl Johnson,
allegedly in custody, is not proven to have any links with any entity who
may or may not have ever allegedly been using the nym "Toto." Thus, if this
Carl Johnson is not known to "one of us" (conceding this communalist point
for a moment), why should we care?
Well, of course we know what reality really is. In all likelihood, this
Carl Johnson _is_ in fact Toto/CJ Parker/Linda Reed/Truthmonger, and so on.
This is even _your_ point, else you wouldn't be exorting us to shut up and
start playing cutesy games like saying "Well, we never knew if Toto was
real or was just a committee of bored Canadians posting out of
Sympatico.ca...."
Did Toto do anything worth arrest? Don't know. Did he do anything worth
conviction? Don't know.
Sounds fair to me.
> * Presuming that the person in custody and/or Toto
> actually committed any act or acts worthy of
> charges and/or incarceration
See above. People have not presumed anything. His alleged sister, Alias
Alia, volunteered that she thought it had something to do with Bell's case.
John Young and Declan McCullough have quite reasonably asked for anyone who
has copies of alleged theats on alleged Web pages to forward these alleged
threats to them. Sounds like good reporting.
> I don't know what the person in custody did or did
> not do. Guess what? You_ probably don't know, either.
> But if you _happen_ to know, and you say so in
> public, or _sound_ in public like you may know, you
> may very well get a subpoena and/or yourself become
> a target of investigation.
Not a single one of _us_, the subscribers to this list, have said anything
about what this alleged person allegedly did. Alia, or someone apparently
claiming to be Alia, commented. Get your "morons" sorted out.
> In any case, you don't help the person in custody
> by proving how clever you are or showering us with
> your self-elevation in the form of condescending
> and patronizing statements that you are "not
> surprised" or that you "thought all along that
> something like this would happen."
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I was not very surprised to
hear that Jim Bell was arrested, though the precise crimes he was charged
with were surprising (the mercaptin and the list of IRS agent home
addresses, and the SSN violations).
I also expect to one day hear that some other members of our list, present
and past, will be arrested. Maybe even me. But certainly some of the
nutcases. Some of them have sent me private e-mail which would likely get
them convicted, too.
(Yes, yes, yes, I _know_ you have claimed that it cannot be "proved" that
e-mail apparently from J. Random Sender is "actually" from him. Not even
with digital signatures, as they can be stolen, snarfed, and so on. Courts
have not yet adequately tested the issue of e-mail provenance. Maybe the
"ALLUSA v. Toto" case will establish precedents. Frankly, I think the proof
will be easily made, given the blizzard of stuff Toto has written and, if
what we are hearing is correct, that threats were on Web pages he authored.
He may like to claim that space aliens ate his drugs, but he's going to
have a hard time convincing a jury that space aliens snuck into the Web
pages he maintained...if this report is true...and inserted threats that he
himself did not make. This will probably not be a case which hinges on
difficulties in authorship.)
> This is the stage at which many dissidents in iron-
> fisted toto-cracies (couldn't help that) have found
> themselves when the first crackdowns occurred after
> periods of "openness" or "liberalism." It is
> very sad that cypherpunks are displaying the very
> same innocence that cost soviet and Chinese dissidents
> their lives and/or freedom before those learned the
> hard way what they were up against.
No "innocence" here. I'm not a party one way or another to Toto's alleged
crimes. If he bombed an RCMP office, or threatened to blow up an IRS
office, or whatever the charges may end up being, why should I leap to his
defense?
I have no idea if did anything, or, indeed, who Toto actually is.
> This is not a game.
>
> You _are_ being surveilled, and everything you post
> in a public forum _is_ being saved for possible
> future use against you or someone important to you.
So? Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive. What does this have to do with
your exortations for us to stand behind this entity you claim we have no
way of knowing is even the same person as this alleged criminal Carl
Johnson?
> I was disappointed by the reactions of many on this
> list when Jim Bell went down, but perhaps some
> moderated their wild suppositions, insinuations
> and baseless, conclusory malthinking due to some
> feeling of kinship, however remote, that is not
> present to the same degree with respect to Toto.
> What is going on now, though, is exactly like 75-
> IQ neighbors opining to clueless reporters, "I
> always thought there was something fishy about
> him!" or "It's sad, but it doesn't surprise me
> that they're carting him off to a psychiatric
> hospital for 60 days-to-30 years of evaluation."
I said I wouldn't be surprised if he was given over to a psych evaluation.
And I found out a few minutes after I sent off my message that indeed he
was, to the epicenter of shrinkdom, Springfield, Missouri. (This more than
anything convinced me that, yep, they had "Toto" all right! Space aliens
will indeed be eating his brain.)
> Get real! If the person in custody were a left-wing
> army ant, _all_ persons of similar stripe would be
> entirely unified in refusing to acknowledge _any_
> culpability on his part, and would instead be
> singing the accusations of government conspiracy,
> malfeasance and complete lack of good faith in
> 10,000-part harmony.
Ah, but you think we "Cypherpunks army ants" should show solidarity to a
fellow Cypherpunks army ant, just because he is one of us! I get it. Sure.
Whatever.
(Notwithstanding that out of the other side of your mouth you keep
repeating the mantra that we don't "know" that this jailed army ant is
actually one of "us," that he may be spoofing us, and that Toto may
actually be floating card game joke.)
> This is the great difference between the collectivists
> and the libertarians / conservatives: The collectivists
> instinctively understand public relations, "solidarity,"
> and the need to be relentless and untiring in defense
> of their own and in unceasing accusation and attack
> against their opposition. Libertarians and
> conservatives, in contrast, are often mere children,
> and not very bright ones at that, in dealing with
> the left and with organized government policies of
> repression and propaganda. In this regard there is
> virtually no difference between most conservatives
> and libertarians.
Yes, we must show solidarity with Brother Toto, even though we claim it has
not been proven that Brother Toto is the same as Brother Carl.
Fuck that. I say what I think. That's what freedom means to me.
--Tim May
"The tree of liberty must be watered periodically with the blood of
tyrants...."
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments.
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 23:18:08 -0700
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
Subject: If Carl is not Toto, what's the need for "solidarity"?
At 10:17 PM -0700 9/3/98, Anonymous wrote:
>Space Aliens Return my Drugs!
>Part 4
(quoting me)
>> It would not be out of line for Toto/Colonel Parker
>> to use real cases as part of one of his elaborate
>> spoofs.
>
>Exactly, as I have no doubt time will quite clearly show.
By the way, Anonymous, if you're so all-fired convinced that time will
clearly show that the perp in custody in Tucson is not the same person as
Toto/Colonel Parker, then why are you fretful about us not showing proper
"solitarity" with either of these two people, who you think are unrelated?
If Toto is not Carl Johnson, then the words of Toto cannot worsen the
situation of Carl Johnson. Nor can the alleged misdeeds of Carl Johnson
affect the status of Toto, who is not Carl Johnson and who is safely away
contemplating how Gomez is forcing him to devour the drugs of space aliens
from the circle of eunuchs.
Only if Carl Johnson _is_ Toto is there any interesting issue for us. (And
even then, "we" are not a collective, we are not the defenders of either
Carl or Toto or anyone else.)
If Carl Johnson is just some random arrestee, some small time dealer or
purse snatcher or whatever, then what does it matter what any of us writes
or asks questions about?
And if, as you have claimed in other posts, that there is no way of proving
who or what Toto is, whether he is a committee or a joke or a nutcase in
Saskatchewan, then how can our discussion possibly hurt this person you
think is not the person in custody in Tucson?
If the perp in jail in Tucson is not Toto (etc.), then who cares what
people ask about Toto? Or do you think the guy who is not in jail, Toto,
will be visited by the police and told, "We have concluded that you are
they guy we have in jail down in Tucson, so we're taking you into custody."?
>From the nutty logic here, you must be Toto. How's Gomez gettting along
with the Admiral these days?
--Tim May
"The tree of liberty must be watered periodically with the blood of
tyrants...."
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments.