I don't agree.
One thing we do know is that, although Crypto is available and, in special
contexts, used, it's use in other contexts is almost counterproduct, sending
up a red flag so that those that "Protect Our Freedoms" will come sniffing
around and bring to bear their full arsenal of technologies and, possibly,
dirty tricks. Merely knowing that you are using stego/crypto in such
contexts can cause a lot of attention come your way, possibly in actual
meatspace, which in many cases is almost worse than not using crypto at all
In addition, although strong and "unbreakable" Crypto exists, one thing a
stint on Cypherpunks teaches you is that it is only rarely implemented in
such a way as to actually be unbreakable to a determined attacker,
particularly if there are not many such cases to examine in such contexts.
The clear moral of this story is that, to increase the odds of truly secure
communication, etc, Crypto in such contexts must become much more
ubiquitous, and I still think Cypherpunks has a role to play there and
indeed has played that role. Such a role is, of course, far more than a mere
cheerleading role,a fact that merits a continued existence for Cypherpunks
in some form or another.
-TD
Only when Crypto is used ubiquitousl
From: "James A. Donald" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Return of the death of cypherpunks.
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2005 12:09:36 -0700
--
From: Eugen Leitl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> While I don't exactly know why the list died, I
> suspect it was the fact that most list nodes offered a
> feed full of spam, dropped dead quite frequently, and
> also overusing that "needs killing" thing (okay, it
> was funny for a while).
>
> The list needs not to stay dead, with some finite
> effort on our part (all of us) we can well resurrect
> it. If there's a real content there's even no need
> from all those forwards, to just fake a heartbeat.
Since cryptography these days is routine and
uncontroversial, there is no longer any strong reason
for the cypherpunks list to continue to exist.
I recently read up on the Kerberos protocol, and
thought, "how primitive". Back in the bad old days, we
did everything wrong, because we did not know any
better. And of course, https sucks mightily because the
threat model is both inappropriate to the real threats,
and fails to correspond to the users mental model, or to
routine practices on a wide variety of sites, hence
users glibly click through all warning dialogs, most of
which are mere noise anyway.
These problems, however, are no explicitly political,
and tend to be addressed on lists that are not
explicitly political, leaving cypherpunks with little of
substance.
--digsig
James A. Donald
6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
AnKV4N6f9DgtOy+KkQ9QsiXcpQm+moX4U09FjLXP
4zfMeSzzCXNSr737bvqJ6ccbvDSu8fr66LbLEHedb
