[ANN] Gathering All Satoshi Nakamoto Personal Correspondence

[altsys]

Purpose:

It's the first time that mankind is able to mint its own money without involving a central authority. It seems now clear that the Nakamoto Consensus Protocol with its POW quorum system known as Bitcoin is of major historical significance, as has been the Gütenberg printing press or the TCP/IP Protocol and the World Wide Web.

When studying scientifically the genesis of a breakthrough, it is of uttermost importance to get as more information as possible about the way this breakthrough arises in the world. A lot of public information about Bitcoin is available through forums and mailing-lists. However epistomologists, historians and scientists want to become intimate with the birth and development of a major breakthrough. One valuable way to study the mindset enabling such a breakthrough is to get access to the personal correspondence between the author and her or his peers. See for instance the Albert Einstein's complete archives including personal correspondence posted online, or the Alan Türing Digital Archive. We think that the Satoshi Nakamoto personal correspondence is of highest interest for the history of science and technology.

THIS IS A CALL FOR PARTICIPATION IN THE GATHERING OF THE SATOSHI NAKAMOTO PERSONAL CORRESPONDENCE.

Process:

This very thread is the tool used to gather Satoshi's emails in a self-organised way.

* COMMUNICATION:  

We propose that this thread be the master thread : feel free to post in any relevant forums or mailing-list a link to this thread. Don't hesitate to contact directly someone known to be a Satoshi correspondent : please report your intention or your action here to avoid spamming them.

* MATERIALS:

Attach directly to your post a compressed file of the correspondence you've managed to obtain with a sha-256 hash of the compressed file.

Please detail your material :
- who is the peer
- is the correspondence between Satoshi and the peer comprehensive or not
- are you the peer itself or not
- ideally the peer cryptographic signature of the correspondence.

IMPORTANT:

Please report every action you take regarding this project on this thread, to avoid a duplication of efforts : let's use this thread as a tool for coordinating our actions in a decentralized manner. This thread is intended to be used as a collective memory for this project for both the personal correspondence materials and the process to acquire them.


Project Management:

TO DO:

N/A

DOING:

N/A

DONE:

N/A

[TheButterZone]

Linked to this topic in #bitcoin-otc & #bitcoin on Freenode.

gmaxwell: TBZ1: I think thats unethical. if he intended it to be public he would have published it.
many people will never publish their correspondance, I've been encouraging people to destroy it.

TBZ1: so what if he published it
still unethical?
or is there no way to tell if he self-published, so absolutely nothing satoshi ever ostensibly said should be catalogued?

gmaxwell: TBZ1: if he published it, it would be out there and no one would need to ask people disclose private emails.

TBZ1: out where?
where's the definitive compendium of all publications?

ghost43: easily available on the net

TBZ1: "just google" includes private email
so try again

[gmaxwell]

Publishing someone's private messages without their consent is generally unethical.

Satoshi didn't make those emails public and it's not really anyone elses right to do so. If he wanted them public, presumably he would have made them public.  Breaking his trust is a disrespect to the great contribution he made to the world.

Publication of his private emails may create personal risk of theft or physical harm for him and his family.  From message which have previously been leaked, we know that Satoshi complained about the fixating and focusing on him and his identity.  Too bad the people he complained to did not respect his wishes.

This material has also been utilized by scammers to aid their inept impersonations.

Obsession with Bitcoin's creator detracts from the greatness of his accomplishment: he built a system where it doesn't matter who created it or why-- because we don't have to trust it or each other.

I hope that people will delete private messages they have and forever protect them from disclosure rather than publish them.

[TheButterZone]

Once again, is there no way to tell if he self-published, so absolutely nothing Satoshi ever ostensibly said should be catalogued?

"if he published it, it would be out there" is a lazy answer. PLENTY of stuff could be out there that Satoshi might not have self-published, that others published pretending to be Satoshi (but still publishing Satoshi's own words), or even attributing words to Satoshi that Satoshi never communicated.

So if there's a reasonable doubt about absolutely everything "Satoshi" ever said (whether it was meant to be public AND whether it was authentic), then nothing whatsoever should be published. Good luck un-ringing the bell!

[gmaxwell]

please don't insult my intelligence with that argument.

If someone received something in private email it was private.  Yes, in theory it could have been published elsewhere-- people should feel free to go FIND those published copies.

There isn't any ambiguity if private email was private.  Your argument that nothing is private unless you can prove it wasn't perhaps published elsewhere is a fallacious isolated demand for rigor.

[TheButterZone]

Your argument that nothing is private unless you can prove it wasn't perhaps published elsewhere is a fallacious isolated demand for rigor.

Except that "nothing is private" strawman isn't my argument, which is actually "there's no way for anyone, other than Satoshi or the original sole recipient, to tell if a block of text already out there with just Satoshi's name attached was intended to be private".

If someone received something in private email it was private.  Yes, in theory it could have been published elsewhere-- people should feel free to go FIND those published copies.

Thank you. So what people will be finding out there RIGHT NOW will be a mix of A) private emails, whether they've had their headers stripped (or modified to appear to have been sent to a listserv) or not, B) stuff Satoshi self-published, and C) words attributed to Satoshi that Satoshi never communicated.

And I would posit that the OP will not collect even one single, authentic, private email more than what's already out there. Why would people suddenly decide NOW to break confidence, after more than 8 years?

P.S. Were Satoshi's emails DKIM?

Out there=on the public internet, cached on who knows how many search engines, archive sites, personal computers, ...?

[mexicantarget]

One valuable way to study the mindset enabling such a breakthrough is to get access to the personal correspondence between the author and her or his peers.

Stop the witch hunt.

Go hunt for information about the origins of the universe, instead of the person(s) who gave you a beautiful solution to one of the most ancient human problems, value transfer, and not only.

Satoshi Nakamoto isn't a subject to study, a lab rat.
It's a new movement, a new religion, a subject we shouldn't question. Hope I don't sound way too extreme.  

Why don't you show us your private messages from your main account? We'd love to study mindsets who like to study people's mindsets.

Asking people to share private information they've exchanged with Satoshi is like asking religious people to betray their Gods and religions.

[cloverme]

In general, not a great idea to collect from other people and publish private emails, etc. It's one thing if they were letters sent to you personally or Satoshi left you something that you wanted to share, but this seems something else. I get your point about a great historical figure and their personal correspondence, but they are usually not alive and/or some type of permission is granted by a relative or some such person. We don't need to know what Satoshi had for lunch on November 3, 2010 anyway.