Re: Return of the death of cypherpunks.
From: James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Oct 28, 2005 12:09 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Return of the death of cypherpunks. From: Eugen Leitl [EMAIL PROTECTED] .. 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. Well, political controversy seems like the least interesting thing about the list--to the extent we're all babbling about who needs killing and who's not a sufficiently pure libertarian/anarchocapitalist and which companies are selling out to the Man, the list is nothing special. The cool thing is the understanding of crypto and computer security techology as applied to these concerns that are political. And the coolest thing is getting smart people who do real crypto/security work, and write working code, to solve problems. The ratio of political wanking to technical posts and of talkers to thinkers to coders needs to be right for the list to be interesting. .. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG AnKV4N6f9DgtOy+KkQ9QsiXcpQm+moX4U09FjLXP 4zfMeSzzCXNSr737bvqJ6ccbvDSu8fr66LbLEHedb --John Kelsey
RE: Return of the death of cypherpunks.
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
Re: Return of the death of cypherpunks.
-- James A. Donald: Since cryptography these days is routine and uncontroversial, there is no longer any strong reason for the cypherpunks list to continue to exist. John Kelsey The ratio of political wanking to technical posts and of talkers to thinkers to coders needs to be right for the list to be interesting. These days, if one is seriously working on overthrowing the state by advancing to crypto anarchy (meaning both anarchy that is hidden, in that large scale cooperation procedes without the state taxing it, regulating it, supervising it, and licensing it, and anarchy that relies on cryptography to resist the state) it is not necessary or advisable to announce what one is up to. For example, Kerberos needs to be replaced by a more secure protocol. No need to add And I am concerned about this because I am an anarchist And so one discusses it on another list. (Kerberos tickets are small meaningful encrypted packets of information, when they should be random numbers. Being small, they can be dictionary attacked.) --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Y068Cy3Zv9GExXRbP24QJP5WmHGLz5VKyqNYFKbx 45fkOIGeiTkFnaM7p/URjB/kgn+0mcg8fMsMLmDy7
Re: Return of the death of cypherpunks.
James overlooks the agricultural virtue of cypherpunks death and rebirth for the natural cycle gets rid of old growth and allows for a new improved version. No doubt the old crop doesn't get much satisfaction being taken for manure, nor do the new sprouts see any reason to hail the shit doing what it's supposed to do. Cypherpunks surely will not vaunt tradition when innovation starts to peter out. True, declaring the war is won and going over to war-storying is a grand tradition of bullshitting.
