Comment by schoen

I had a phone call with him in about 2000, because he was then publishing a lot of material about DRM (and attacks on DRM), and I was also into anti-DRM stuff and was thinking of going to an industry meeting related to it. I wanted to know if he would publish whatever documents I might obtain there.

I remember that he said I could make a business card (!) saying that I was a special representative or special agent or journalist or whatever I wanted for Cryptome.

I said something like "wait, really?" and he said something like "well, who I am to say who does or doesn't work for Cryptome?" or "why should anyone believe you when you say you do or don't work for Cryptome? people should never believe each other!" or something like that.

He also warned me to watch out for people messing with my laptop in the hotel.

I didn't end up making the business card (I thought it would make people more suspicious of me rather than less, which was probably right), but I think I did send him a couple of documents, in retrospect probably very boring ones.

I met him briefly in person once, ironically at the announcement lecture for Wikileaks at HOPE in New York. I remember being confused because I assumed he would get along well with the Wikileaks people, but he was already kind of skeptical or cynical somehow.

He was also famous for posting extremely cynical takes to mailing lists.

John seemingly felt that power had already corrupted everyone or was always on the verge of corrupting everyone, and that one should be extremely reluctant to believe in anyone's stated motives for anything. I don't know if he thought there was some way out of that scenario or that that was just human nature. He always reminded me of the epigraph of Illuminatus!, attributed to Ishmael Reed: "The history of the world is the history of the warfare between secret societies."

I definitely admired his courage and independence.