<nettime> jya on mil disnfo

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To: cypherpunks@lne.com
     Subject: CDR: Re: mil disinfo on cryptome
          From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
               x2

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To: cypherpunks@lne.com
Subject: CDR: Re: mil disinfo on cryptome
From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2002 16:17:11 -0800

It is likely that Cryptome and the Net will be used to spread
disinfo, as with predecessor means of information spread.
What better way to contaminate citizen tools than to
try to make them unreliable compared to official sources.
Dotty Rumsfeld is certainly practicing that with relish, rather
being used for that purpose by smarter people who used
Reagan and other big-smile dotters similarly.

Even without disinfo, sources of information of all kinds
need a beady eye and skeptical mind. One of a series
we're assembling is on protection from explosives now
that digital terrorism has been diminished by 9/11 and
attention has returned to physical security of the homeland.

We've looked at some of the homeland security opportunism 
of professionals in the built environment field -- engineers,
architects, builders, real estate promoters, banks, insurance --
and see that they are advocating restriction of information
on protective measures to professionals and those entrusted
to camouflage scary threats from the citizenry reassure 
against panic. This smells of protection racket which parallels 
the early argument for restricting crypto to specialists and
hiding Net security threats from trusting users.

Here's a link to a group of building associations set
up in March to aid homeland security:

  http://www.tisp.org/

Here's a link to architects promotion of work
on homeland security:

  http://www.aia.org/security/

However, some more seasoned parties say that it's time
to share sensitive technology for protecting the physical
infrastructure more broadly as the homeland comes under 
increasing threat. That military-grade protective measures
need to be more widely known and incorporated into
building codes and construction practices. It is expected
that this could take up to 10 years to become effective,
to rewrite codes, to retrain current professionals, to blend 
into professional students' curricula, to adjust budgets for 
safer construction.

Blast Mitigation for Structures (1999)

  http://cryptome.org/bmfs99.htm

Protecting Buildings From Bomb Damage (1995)

  http://cryptome.org/pbfbd95.htm

So what is to be done in the meantime? We think more information
on self-protection needs to be disseminated, following the
crypto model, to liberate classified and restricted documents
and foster development of practices which do not require
state-licensed professionals to implement.

We expect there will be bitching about putting dangerous
information on the Net for amateurs to blow up themselves
and neighbors, and rightly so, for it is needed to offset the 
soothing and deliberately scary disinfo associated with
relying upon trusted parties who never quite live up to
their promises to protect and hinder access to means
of self-protection.

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To: cypherpunks@lne.com
Subject: CDR: RE: mil disinfo on cryptome
From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Date: Sat, 06 Apr 2002 21:22:35 -0800

Disinfo is a complicated topic, and it's not easy to know
for sure when it is occurring; if it was easy to tell then
it wouldn't be very effective disinfo.

For all its admirable reputation RAND continues to
be a forum for disinformation of high quality. This
follows from its classified work and the cross-
contamination of its unclassified output. But this
is true of all persons and institutions which provide
both classified and unclassified products.

For a goodly part of the reputation of such actors
is derived from their classified work and the imputation
of value of unclassified stuff due to access to classified
information.

Contrarily, one can argue, that anybody who has
access to classified material cannot be trusted for
their unclassified work.

David Kahn made such an argument when he refused
to sign a confidentiality agreement for NSA  in order
to have access to classified archives. According to Kahn
he was the first to refuse that faustian arrangement
(pun intended, Faustine). Instead he sat at a desk
outside the classified archives and worked only
with material that did not require an NDA, doing so,
he said, in order to help assure reader trust of his
work.

Kahn's right, and admirably so, for once you get access
to classified material you  are doomed to be distrusted
outside the secret world. Too much lying has been done
by those who have access for anybody with access
to ever be trusted, which, no doubt, is the intention of
those who believe in privileged information. You are
either in or out, no mercy from either side, as Faust
knew.

To be blunt, no official can be trusted, period, nor can
any of their contractors who have agreed to abide
the official rules. Which, as oft stated here, includes
all state-empowered and privilieged professionals,
from architects to lawyers to doctors to priests to
acupuncturists, and not least, journalists who may 
pretend to authorize themselves but behave in 
accord with the rules of their privileged publishers.

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Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2002 19:31:01 -0700
To: cypherpunks@lne.com
From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
Subject:  RE: mil disinfo on cryptome

The Pentagon Papers was a classic disinfo operation
confected by RAND. The NYT and Ellsberg will never
let us forget their valor, credible only for those who abide
a fairly narrow belief system, highly elitist and condescending
toward the populace.

Then there's Bill Sheehan's tragic price to remind what can
go wrong with career-enhancing, arranged revelations when
a beneficiary attempts to go beyond a neat, heavily promoted
formulation oh so satisfying to those who arranged the op.

Faustine, you lose your cool whenever established methodologies
for handling information and belief about it are challenged, as
if your faith in the way things are and should be is being
unduly questioned.

Reputation is a trap not an accomplishment, and you appear
to have been ensnared by desire to be knowledgeable in a
particularly sanctioned way. All those citations, all that
homework, cannot beefup what's missing from your own
original contribution. Abundant citing of authority, beware
what it tells about your vacuity.

Losing your cool, though, is swell, for it is a sign of advancement
over over over-false-confidence and the yearning to have gotten
matters of the world right once and for all. Nothing more crippling
than a desire to be free of doubt, but that desire is a salient
characteristic of those who are recruited into privileged circles:
a promise of access to privileged information and behavior is
the bait, the trap is never being able to talk about how sleight
the secrets are, and how shitty the insiders treat one another,
to anyone outside the magic circle. All secret societies fear
disclosure of their vacuity, that's why secrets are invaluable.

Just don't go there is the best advice, and a way to guard
against that is to show characteristics that assure you will
never be invited, that you can't keep secrets, not even
false ones.

Desire to part of an coseted elite is sucker's candy. The 
desire to reputable a pale shroud over insecurity and need

for backing of reputable authority. That's why reputable people
and forums are erected and selected for leaking worthless
shit as if shinola.

RAND didn't invent this hagiography of burnished research
but it is a stellar producer of such icons and has an admirable
network of distribution. You will hear what is intllectually      
corrupting about this orchestrated warped and incomplete     
information about world affairs when you talk to a RAND
insider who has been dumped for stepping out of line, that     
is putting one's ideas and product outside the fearsome      
editorial board of the hallowed institution, as with RAND      
so with the hagiography of the New York Times, Washinton
Post and others of the centrist compulsion.

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