Schneier on Security

quincunx • December 4, 2006 1:58 PM

@ Bruce

People seem to hate the MPAA so much that they can’t see that they are right, even though their motives are dubious at best.

‘Remember pretexting? It’s the cute name given to…well…fraud. It’s when you call someone and pretend to be someone else, in order to get information. Or when you go online and pretend to be someone else, in order to get something. There’s no question in my mind that it’s fraud and illegal, but it seems to be a gray area.’

There is no fraud. Fraud involves implicit or explicit theft. If there is no transfer of actual property under false premises then there is no fraud.

The issue here is not legal, but moral and ethical. The issue here is ‘lying’, but lying should never be subject to persecution unless a contract has been broken, and then the punishment should only fit the crime.

Exchanging information, is not theft, because information is not, never was, and never will be legitimate property. The person who gives you info, does not lose the info, and hence no theft has occurred.

Furthermore, Bruce, if you were serious in combating fraud then you will have to agree that every Central Bank will have to abolished. There is no greater fraud than these institutions, and yet hardly anyone knows about it.

The reason it’s a ‘gray area’ is because the law is corrupt, it is not unifrom, but ad-hoc and contradictory to the extreme, just like all public law.

‘These people are looking more and more like a criminal organization every day.’

Yes, but for a very different reason, mainly their manipulation of the biggest criminal organization in the US: the federal government.

quincunx • December 4, 2006 3:13 PM

@ DBH

‘If I use pretexting in order to gain private information, it is pretty darn certain I’m not doing that for fun, but for profit, even if I’m just a stalker, it is with criminal intent.’

Criminal intent is not a crime.

If the holder of your private information divulges it to a third party under any pretext, they are the ones that are breaking their contract with you. It is up to them to ensure that it doesn’t happen, and use the law to pursue the wrongdoer (if that is what they suspect). I have no problem with pursuing the pretexter to see if they are a criminal organization.

But to hold the caller as the sole party responsible, merely for lying is wrong and unjust.

Do you see the difference? You may pursue the suspect, but the act itself is not a crime.

This whole act is nothing more than a burdon shifter, not a crime reducer.

quincunx • December 4, 2006 3:26 PM

@ Matthew Skala

I don’t agree with much of the positive laws that exist. Just because laws exist does not mean that they are correct, it merely means that the party that advocated them got them into the law, and a lot of ex-post-facto rationales have been built for them.

Conspiracy itself should not be a crime.

quincunx • December 4, 2006 6:39 PM

@ Gopi

‘Should inducing somebody to violate a contract be against the law?’

No.

‘However, I think that intentionally tricking somebody into breaking a contract is something that should be civilally and/or criminally prosecutable.’

I don’t. It denies free will. Your doctrine says that if A tells B to commit a crime, then B acts as a virtual arm of A, without any brains.

Of course the scenario changes once A applies coercive methods on B.

quincunx • December 5, 2006 2:12 AM

@ Pat Cahalan

“Lots of laws apply to social engineering and persuasion. If I convince an emotionally pliable subject to cash out their bank account and give me their money, that’s not illegal. However, if I persuade them to shoplift an item, sell it, and give me the money, that’s prosecutable. Admittedly most DA’s wouldn’t take the case, but materially benefitting from crime is conspiracy.”

Yes, he should be prosecuted for shoplifting, and you will have to return the money to its rightful owner.

His punishment should not exceed that which he took plus the effort of going after him and you.

Anything more than that, such as dubious charges of Consipiracy are a violation of rights.

What should the punishment be for Conspiracy? It has no monetary value, it can thus only be punished arbitrarily by a judge. And what will this punishment be, today? Probably jail, and maybe a some extra tribute to the state?

Well in my book the criminal would thus be the state.

Yeah, I know they will prod out the ol’ prevention excuse, but certainly again it is wholly arbitrary. Why is the charge of conspiracy greater than the act of crime? Conspiracy itself is not a crime, therefore I find it amusing that it can only be considered an additional crime if another crime has taken place.

“Those costs can be subjective, but they are not always arbitrary. If I routinely do $10,000 worth of profitable transactions a day for three years (within a small delta), and the system is offline for a day, it is certainly not arbitrary to say that the downtime cost me $10,000.”

You are absolutely right. $10,000 is the opportunity cost of having your site down. It is no different, in a sense, than your creditor counting your expected payments as incoming cash flow, and he has a right to pursue you for payment.

But someone who shuts down your site is a criminal, and should be prosecuted. If it is your host, I don’t know what kind of contract you have.

Someone who indirectly effects your bottom line by lying to you is not a criminal, though, and should owe you nothing.

“Point of fact you can certainly sue someone for billions for such an incident. You’re unlikely to win billions, however.”

Well, that just goes to show how bad our legal system is.

“I find it to be rather laughable myself, but that is because the MPAA and RIAA have a business model based upon distribution, not upon production, and distribution of their particular product is no longer limited technically, so their fundamental business model is flawed.”

True that. But you see, if they never had the advantage of being a ‘protected’ industry, they would have realized that long ago, when their profits started sinking. They would have adopted a better model if the forces of competition were allowed to work.

“On the contrary, it currently is treated very much like property. You may disagree with that defintion of property, but arguing definitions doesn’t invalidate an argument. Put another way, if there is no such thing as “intellectual property”, then your analysis is correct, but it’s invalid to say that “there’s no such thing as intellectual property”.”

Oh sure, ‘intellectual property’ exists in law, but it doesn’t exist in reality land. Can you show me this property? I can’t seem to find it anywhere.

What does exist is what happens when one tries to enforce these figments of the imagination: someone else’s real physical property is violated.

“You are not able to do anything directly about me posting your name
in the blog. You don’t control the blog. However, I would be highly astonished if you didn’t ask Bruce/the moderator to remove my posts, and I would be more highly astonished if they didn’t comply as a courtesy to you.”

Correct, I do not control the blog, and I have NO RIGHT to expect anything. Period. The fact that a courtesy can be extended, does not mean I am entitled to it, only thankful. It is also within my right to incentivise the process by throwing in a few bucks or claiming to be someone else! I can even ask Davi to fix his honest mistake by doing that for me.

“I disagree. Assume (for example), you told Davi your real name under the condition that he not reveal it to anyone else, and Davi revealed that name to me while I was posing as you.
You may or may not choose to burn time trying to stick Davi with the
consequences of violating the contract (which would be difficult to
prove, since Davi will claim that he thought he was complying with the terms of the contract).”

What a tricky problem you’ve posed. So tricky in fact, that I’m shocked you might think that it could be solved by a one size-fits-all government edict.

I can’t answer that, but perhaps a private arbitrator skilled in such problems can come up with good solution that can be accepted by all parties?

“Such an appeal to authority is a normal response. You (in your
personal philosophy) don’t regard the government as a valid authority.
That’s fine and all, but you also disregard the fact that a significant
portion of the populace does, and endows that authority with powers
that are quite real.”

Actually most of the powers endowed where made by the now dead, I do not see how the dead should be able to impose their beliefs on me and others.

What is true is that the majority do not understand the laws, what they do and why most of them are bad. They have no idea how they are being exploited on a regular basis, and how the biggest problems in society are directly caused by the institution they wrongly believe is there to help them. They only seem to be concerned when they are at the other end of the gun.

Quin:
But who gets to oversee the authorities? Why are they the only ones that are allowed to do this?

Pat:
“It stands to reason that if the first question can be answered to satisfaction, then the answer to the
second question follows -> they’re the only ones who are allowed to do
this because they are trusted, and not everyone else is, yes?”

No. I do think that they are trusted by some people on some matters, but they are definitely not trusted by everyone on ALL matters. I can’t think of one person that trusts their government on all issues.

People don’t get to decide to trust them, they are forced into it.

“Maybe other people should be allowed to do this, if they are also trusted.”

Yes, and that should be decided by anyone, with no imposition from above.

“Flipping your post on its head, you’re arguing on the one hand that the MPAA ought to be able to do this because intellectual property
isn’t property and conspiracy isn’t a crime. At the same time, you’re
at the very least implying that the government ought not to be able
to do this, because it can’t be trusted. If intellectual property isn’t property and conspiracy isn’t a crime, how is the government’s ability to do this (or not) relevant in the slightest?”

Yes. I’m arguing that they should be able to do it (pre-texting). And if they can’t, why is the gov able to do it?

In other words, why do they get to act above their own laws?

It is illegal to lie to the gov, but it is legal to be lied to by the gov. For consistency sake, I’m trying to say that we don’t encourage double standards.

Maybe I wasn’t clear, I’ll admit that.

“We live in a democratic republic, so our standards are only important if we can convince the appropriate number of others that we’re going with the right standard and they’re using the wrong one.”

My point is not to incorporate things into the democratic domain where they don’t belong. Imagine a shoe factory running on that principle, what colored shoes should we make today? Let’s go to the polls and see. Afterall we must have a shoe standard, god forbid people can independently choose what colored shoes they want.

I was under the impression that we are only a ‘democratic republic’ in name, but in pratice we are actually an Empire. We certainly seem to be exhibiting all the tell-tale signs.

“You’ll need to define “police operations” before I’ll even start to
comment on your budgetary evaluations and the evaluation metrics for determining “better record” need to be rigorously defended.”

I don’t feel like digging around, so if you are interested there is some links here:

http://libertariannation.org/b/police.htm#priv
http://mason.gmu.edu/~atabarro/PublicvsPrivate.pdf

“You’re hijacking a thread again – I don’t think this thread was about the nature of property, but you’ve basically boiled all the nuances of the thread down to base assumptions that not very many
people agree with, again.”

No, this thread seemed to be about why people hate the MPAA. Therefore I felt the need to mention why they should hate the MPAA. They don’t have to agree with me fully – but people do understand that there is something fundamentally wrong with IP one way or another.

“The effects of these laws deserve to be discussed within the framework of our existing legal system, instead of resorting to dismissing the foundations of the legal system and thereby declaring the problem to be nonexistent”

Fascinating. Why is it that 95% of today’s government is unconstitutional? Why was the law constantly not followed during such an illegal accreation process?

Why should we address the problem within a framework of law that is not followed anyway?

The political process does not work by rational discussion.

quincunx • December 5, 2006 12:20 PM

@Gopi:

“I must say, I’m astonished that somebody as seemingly intelligent as yourself would choose to totally ignore the rights of the individual, and consider nothing but the rights of society.”

I would posit that a free market respects individual rights more so than corrupt government. That is, the individual has the freedom and responsibility to enforce his rights as he sees fit.

@bob:

“Your theory says that certain things will happen when government is removed. But practice is rarely the same as theory.”

True. But we won’t be cured of these ills until we honestly identify what the source of the problem is.

quincunx • December 5, 2006 12:26 PM

@Zwey

“Could someone post a concise legal definition of the word fraud.”

Fraud involves implicit or explicit theft. If there is no transfer of actual property under false premises then there is no fraud.

This thread is not about fraud.

quincunx • December 5, 2006 3:03 PM

quincunx @ 10:41AM:

“A free market should decide what punishments must be levied to actors with free will.”

For example, what would people on this forum think be the proper punishment for pre-texting?

It is highly amusing that such a thing has occurred, sort of. What the new quincunx has done is can actually be considered a ‘nuissance’. I will explain below.

The quincunx that posted on:
December 5, 2006 10:41 AM
December 5, 2006 12:20 PM
and
December 5, 2006 12:26 PM

Is not the one that has posted anti-statist theory since march 2006, or who has had discussions with Pat Cahalan about midevil Iceland or Ireland, and is not the same one that posts from two different IP addresses that can be verified by the moderators.
At least I think I only used two (I may be wrong).

The ‘real’ quincunx who has built up quite the reputation considers those posts to be done in bad faith merely to attempt to prove a point.

The ‘real’ quincunx does not know the identity of the person that has been signing the same name.

Now the question remains, is it necessary to have state laws to prevent this from happening, or can this problem be solved locally by the property owner, the ultimate person who can lay down the rules of conduct: Bruce Schneier? or an agent that he has hired or ask to do the task for him such as: moderator? Or by the opinion of other posters?

What would be a proper punishment? Perhaps being told not to do it, perhaps a ban, perhaps an apology? I don’t really know, and it’s not up to me to decide. All I can do in this situation is state the case, and let the final arbiter, Bruce, decide. I do of course have the right to pursue my own investigation if I please, and see if I should expose the imposter to the public.

This is the concept that few understand, that laws exist without the state. Laws are always laid down by property owners.

But what if I appealed to the state? Well they will steal money from the taxpayers to pursue justice on my behalf, they will come up with an arbitrary judgment that will foist pecuniary costs on the culprit. What they will not do is set a good precedent for resolving such conflict peacefully and thereby retard the discovery of technical means of dealing with such problems. They will also ignore those who have been affected by his/her conduct: you and me.

Now imagine a society where peaceful arbitration is suppressed and anyone can appeal to the state at others’ expense to pursue their sense of judgment, such as the MPAA. It would not be surprising that such a system would evolve to greater conflict and quicker impulses to use legal force to squash their opponents.

If the MPAA had to pursue their idea of IP at their own expense, it would occur to them quickly that they make no profits and incur heavy losses in doing so. Consumer sovereignty would lead them to change their business models much quicker.

There is another concept that people do not seem to understand. There is legal action: the use of force, and then there are ethical and moral codes that can be superimposed on top of them and adopted by a group of people that choose to follow them. Anarchy has absolutely no problem with voluntary government – where people unanimously choose to belong to a group and follow their laws (as long as the right to exit is present). This forum, while obviously under ultimate control of US laws, and only then by Bruce can also adopt moral and ethical codes.

This is exactly how most open source software is developed, and precisely the same way Wikipedia works.

Therefore the new quincunx, I would think is acting in bad faith and violating the ethical code, that I’m sure that people here voluntarily adopt, that one should not pose as someone else (unless they’re Anonymous). He is thus, only in our ethical code, defrauding other people by posing as me. Therefore I would consider it a ‘nuisance’.

He/she seems to have done a good job at fooling some people (no offense, guys), even though he has contradicted me in some respects.

I can only answer questions that were meant for the real me:

@ Gopi:

“Good question. What should the punishment be for Murder? Should it be based on the monetary value of the person, thus resulting in zero penalties for murdering homeless people? What about assault? Penalties based solely on your medical bills?”

That is a very difficult question to answer. I can not give you a good answer, because I am not an expert.

It is intersting to note that Life Insurance seems to have a price for death, and it is typically not peanuts.

It is important to note that if you have strong feeling about murder, then you should sign up with a defense agency that respects the same attitudes you have.

“If I pick the locks to a bank, and get all the way to the vault, only to discover that the vault is empty for some reason, should I get off with no penalty? Should my penalty be based on the average amount of money in that vault?”

I would like to point out that state chartered banks are inherently fraudulent institutions that have, historically, emptied their vaults, not met all their obligations to pay their depositors on demand. In such cases, starting in 1819 and proceeding to the 1930s, every recession the banks get approval from the government to continue in operations while not meeting their obligations. No other institutions enjoys such a privilege, without being thrown into prison.

The term for this is euphemistically called ‘Bank Holidays’. I call it license for theft.

There are reasons it doesn’t happen any more but is too long to explain. But if they can rob the people, I do not see why you should not be able to either 🙂 Of course the best solution is to not allow them to engage in fraud in the first place.

@ Gopi

Although the following was not directed at me, I feel obligated to answer it:

“I disagree with what appears to be one of your axioms: that economic efficiency is the sole purpose of society, and that more economic efficiency is always better.”

I do not postulate the homo-economicus, that is a straw man that is commonly thrown at people like myself. My central axiom is: non-aggression. Except for self-defense.

Economic efficiency will be the result of non-aggression, but that does not concern me.

Homo economicus is the guiding principle of mathematical economics, and those who attempt to treat economics using the same methodology as the natural sciences. I reject this view.

quincunx • December 5, 2006 4:03 PM

So what are you suggesting?

That I use the laws of the state to pursue you for such a horrendous crime?

‘The real quincunx would never misspell the word nuisance.’

Why? He commonly misspells many words.

‘If this impostor claims that fraud through pretexting does not involve “transfer of actual property” then I guess he considers his time to be worth absolutely nothing.’

What “property”, what the hell are you talking about? I don’t consider text stored on Bruce’s server to be my property! I left no explicit label to state that I would prefer for my text to be treated as property, and respected by people who choose to adopt the same ethical standard.

I also do not understand the non-sequitor of writing on this forum as wasting my time. You have given me the opportunity to present my case in a better light. I have demonstrated my own valuation by taking action: by responding.

If I didn’t think it was valuable to me, why the hell would I have acted in such a matter?

The reductio ad absurdum of your logic will lead to the conclusion that getting anyone’s attention for any reason is a violation of their precious time. I think that your doctrine is extremely anti-social and unrealistic, and doesn’t explain why people even post on this forum, or anywhere else for that matter, because afterall they don’t get compensated!

And as for ‘imposter’, I think you underestimate the intelligence of the audience.

quincunx • December 6, 2006 9:19 AM

And what is the point of your argument? Appeal to Bruce that you cease and desist? I’ll handle my own battles, thank you. This is idiotic.

@Pat

“Any society that has a judicial system that allows people to murder random homeless people wouldn’t survive very long, because a staggeringly large percentage of the populace would regard such a system as fundamentally unjust.”

I don’t believe that the system I propose would allow the murder of the random homeless but that is not for me to decide. It’s the free market. However, I imagine that the free market would not tolerate random murder. I would also posit that it would not tolerate a drastic adjustment such as an ill-conceived war. Again, I’m loathe to imagine exactly how the free market will operate on matters such as what is just and unjust.

quincunx • December 11, 2006 7:33 PM

quincunx, though I do not disagree with your previous comments, it is quite frustrating that you continue to use the same name.

@ Pat

“So, the discontented either lack passion (because some of their radicalism is being assuaged by society, if not all) or they lack an effective body of leadership (because you need more than a few iconic leaders to spur revolution, and although you get some effective leaders who are driven entirely by principle, you have a hard time getting an effective organization’s worth).”

Actually what we lack is the ability to steal other people’s money (assuming we can discard the non-aggression principle), something the state has well established by ever sophisticated means.

The state is always excellent at squashing any effective opinion that sets itself apart from the state. At any moment it can force the media to broadcast a ‘public service announcement’ to the people that they should capture anyone harboring anti-state views.

“I think it will take a pretty major destabilizing event, or a combination of several destabilizing events, to cause a true societal breakdown in a capitalistic democracy. Pandemic is probably the “best” possibility – cultures rarely stay stable when the threat of death can come with general contact with your neighbor. ”

Pandemics, to my knowledge has never wiped out the state, without simply wiping out nearly everyone.

A major destabilizing effect is usually created by the state’s fiscal, monetary, and legal machinations. They are typically marginal, but cumulative in their effects. That’s why no one actually anticipates revolutions until they come in full swing.

” all of the governmental excesses since 9-11 still have not reproduced a system as unbalanced as what we had under McCarthyism.”

And what were those excesses?

Using state violence to limit the internal communist movement, right?

Although McCarthyism was wrong (wow, you had an ethical judgment!), it was ineffective, NO?

It was ineffective because it tried to suppress state-power theory (communism in practice) using state power. So all we got in the end, or what we have today, is simply more communism.

Using state power to suppress libertarian ideas is more practical, and will work.

quincunx • December 12, 2006 8:05 PM

@ Pat

“quincunx 1 (yes, I can tell the difference)”

Good, I appreciate that.

“So it’s just a matter of funding?”

No it’s also about barriers to entry created by the legal apparatus of state.

“Doesn’t this statement support my general argument that a central state is more effective (not ethically but practically speaking) than a decentralized one, and that if you abolish this central state over time another will rise?”

If people generally believe that, then yes it will come about. What I’m merely trying to do is persuade people that the means they employ produce the counterresult they seem to desire, at least in their rhetoric.

“The “central state”ists are by your own admission better at controlling the money than the free market anarchists are, no?”

Well you do have a good point, I do admit that historically this is supported. Anarchism is relatively new in the history of social science, though. It’s origin happens to be completely engrossed in the development of the modern state. The societies we discussed earlier were nearly anarchistic not on any recognizable central philosophical principles, but merely as an organic outgrowth.

It can also be said that that is not true, because in most places in the world the free market elements of voluntary exchange is running ahead of the political arm, which is why we still have positive economic growth. Any state that manages to secure control of production more than their internal market will inevitably lead to retrogression.

The economic and political principles are both operating concurrently, one feeding on the other.

Statism is always a reaction to economic development (hence the root: stat), that is why historically private property and markets develop prior to a government, which can live off surplus production extracted from this free production. That is why the ‘social compact theory’ of governments are dead wrong.

“However, this is not sustainable, even under totalitarian regimes.”

Right. The more totalitarian the less stability. However, a practical level of totalitarianism can be gradually brought about, completely undetected to the untrained eye. That is my concern: the effects of all interventionism. From my readings, middle-of-the-road interventionism gradually ALWAYS leads to socialism, decay, war, hyperinflation, at which point revolution seems to come out of nowhere, even though the seeds have been growing for quite a while.

“Oh, true, but they can be a major contributing event to social destabilization, like famine. Famine is pretty unlikely in the US at this point, I believe, although it’s certainly possible in a large number of other political bodies currently in place.”

Famine is unlikely? Well I will explain what is necessary to engineer one, and you can judge for yourself.

a) Place strict price-controls on agricultural products. A shortage will be created.

b) Move into ration food by government decree, do not allow ration coupons to be transferable.

c) Redirect most police effort to prevent black markets that will inevitably form.

d) The disemployed farmers will need to be aided, therefore more taxation or inflation will be necessary to keep them idle and not producing.

e) Raise tariffs to prevent food imports.

Since most people do not understand the effects of price controls, tariffs, transfer payments or know when they are operating, a great public outcry will directed to the few agricultural firms still managing to stay afloat. The government will blame everything on the supposed ‘free market’ that has been operating [when it hasn’t], and will move into to nationalize the food industry.

The price-control (triangular intervention) -> ration (coerced political distribution) ->nationalization (tax & spend political allocation) method has brought more civilizations than one might realize.

I do agree that famine is less likely than other forms of predation. I think energy manipulation is the best target for today’s atmosphere.

“Actually, I’d say it was using publically-inspired fear to leverage an agenda of increasing the political power of a set of people.”

Right, communist ploys from time immemorial in a nutshell.

“Ah, again, I’m not talking about ethics here. I’m talking about effectiveness.”

I can’t take accept that kind of argument. How does one judge effectiveness? That’s like saying that ‘stuff happens’ and ‘stuff sometimes got done’. Pyramids, too were effective burial grounds, but so what? Effective for who?

“Yes, in the long run. That’s my point. The abuse of power that you fear in a central state exists, but it is not a domain-level problem, it is transitory, and the effects of it can be limited.”

Can be limited how? All I see in the US case is occasional limitations on acceleration of state predation, but no absolute limits at all.

“You say that libertarian principles are more efficient and ethical than a central state.”

Right, because one’s goal is not performed at another’s expense.

‘You equate “efficient and ethical” with “effective”‘

Effective on an individual and voluntarily social manner, that important social fabric that constitutes civilization. The only ethical standard for each person being able to achieve their own sense of efficiency and therefore positive subjective effectiveness is the libertarian one. The alternatives to the libertarian ethic amount to nothing other than rationalization for theft in order to promote someone else’s idea of what efficiency and effectiveness are.

The outcome of lettings things run their course is a more complex civilized society.

“At the same time, you admit that a central state can quash libertarian principles”

Right, it can never promote libertarianism because its antithetical to its prolonged operation of looting a group of people on behalf of another.

” I’m saying it is more effective,”

Effective at what? Doing something? For something to be effective there should be a stated goal and analysis as to whether the goal is reached, or is tending to do so, otherwise effective becomes ‘something happens’. But we already know that stuff happens because it’s a natural consequence of the fact that humans must act all the time.

I think you are taking the word ‘effective’ too literally, that is: effect is created. But all actions create effects. We learn nothing from asserting the obvious.

“In short, while I think that there are appealing or intriguing intellectual concepts about libertarianism, I think it’s ultimately a doomed political philosophy, as it cannot stand in the long run.”

It is a doomed political philosophy, because it is an anti-political philosophy. That’s the point.

If you would like to learn more, there is pretty good audio book that puts some of the things I’ve been saying in perspective. It is available here:

http://www.mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=87

I leave you with a quote from Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset:

In the disturbances caused by scarcity of food, the mob goes in search of bread, and the means it employs is generally to wreck the bakeries. This may serve as a symbol of the attitude adopted, on a greater and more complicated scale, by the masses of today towards the civilization by which they are supported … Civilization is not “just here,” it is not self-supporting.

It is artificial … if you want to make use of the advantages of civilization, but are not prepared to concern yourself with the upholding of civilization — you are done. In a trice you find yourself left without civilization. Just a slip, and when you look, everything has vanished into air. The primitive forest appears in its native state, just as if curtains covering pure Nature had been drawn back. The jungle is always primitive and vice versa, everything primitive is mere jungle.