The public is in fact uneducated as pertains to encryption, Tim,
and it is your duty as a taxpaying American to make your representatives
aware of your feelings. I urge anyone here to send e-mail to his or her
elected representatives. I also urge you to contact your reps via
telephone, and via regular mail. Repeatedly. My advice is to be civil;
avoid epithets and flames.
Our mail will be disregarded if we preface our message with "You
idiots", or "You politicians don't have a clue" or something like that.
Even though they [politicians] frequently make decisions most of us feel
are bad ones, they ARE educated and honorable people (well, most are). Be
respectful, but make your point clearly and briefly. Call their toll-free
numbers.
Be prepare to be totally ignored or simply mollified. It happens,
so don't go on a rant against all politicians because some Congressman or
woman seems to snub you. Be creative, and find a way to make the low-level
aid who really reads your e-mail or letter want to show it to the boss.
Some of us do not feel that writing our elected representatives
will do any good. I am here to tell you that this is not always the case. I
can cite instances where real things happened by my writing a letter to
Congress. Sometimes the answers were not at all what I had hoped, and I
stirred up some controversy once while a member of the United States Navy
(ask me about it at a meeting sometime. Seth would be proud). But I did get
results. And I hope you ALL will use your intellect and the fact that you
are a REGISTERED VOTER (you ARE registered, right?) as a lever.
So, enough said. If anyone wants to write a letter to the Senate,
House, State or Local government, I would be glad to help you proof it so
that you aren't disappointed. Or not. But remember, I BELIEVE the People of
this country should and DO have the power. I think that the reason things
don't change is because not enough of us exercise our Constitutional rights.
Lastly, most of you know my background; I spent 22 years in the
United States Navy. I did this to make a secure life for my family, but I
believed what I was doing was just and fair. I could not have spent all
those years away from my family if I didn't believe in this country, good
AND bad. I still believe in our country, even though I disagree with many
of the higher level decisions made. And, I still write letters to Senators
and Congressmen. And most of them get form letter replies. But not all of
them...not all...
Regards to all,
Jim Darrough
At 10:51 AM 9/21/2001 -0700, you wrote:
>In light of the ignorance that the public has shown regarding
>encryption, and the tendency of people to be violent to their fellow
>citizens as of late, I'm not sure I would like to stand up in a public
>place where people can consume alcohol and preach encryption (so to
>speak). Some of our public officials are attempting to link encryption
>and terrorism in the mind of Joe Amerika. Common sense and
>cool-headedness were the second string of victims last week.
> Likewise, I fear for my middle-eastern friends. I work with a
>gentleman from Pakistan who's cousin and his friends were beaten at a
>pizzeria simply for looking like Pakistanis.
>
> I think we should do it in a private meeting and only advertise
> on this
>list. The most dangerous thing to be in America is 'unpopular'. An
>interesting corollary to that is this: "The only free society is one in
>which it is safe to be unpopular". Something to think about...
>
>TimH
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of
> > Seth Cohn
> > Sent: Friday, September 21, 2001 10:30 AM
> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > Subject: [EUG-LUG:2917] Re: GPG and private/public keys
> >
> >
> > simply put:
> >
> > You keep secret the private, give away the public.
> >
> > People sending you stuff use your public to ENcrypt,
> > only you (with the private key) can DEcrypt, thus it's
> > readable only to you.
> >
> > You send out ENcrypted with private key,
> > anyone can DEcrypt it using your public key, thus it's
> > _signed_ by you.
> >
> > In order to have a secure conversation, you both need a set of keys.
> > You swap public keys, and always encrypt using the other person's key.
> > If you want the other person to be sure it is you, you also
> > _sign_ it using
> > your
> > private key. Thus they have to decrypt twice (not really,
> > since signing
> > is often more of a hash thing).
> >
> > Let's plan a keysigning party for Mid-October. Hey we can do
> > it at the Wild
> > Duck,
> > get other people involved, and publicize it. I'll work on
> > that. The more
> > people
> > who sign, even if not everyone signs everyone else's key, the better.
> > It's a web of trust metric. Then we upload stuff to the main
> > keyservers,
> > and
> > we end up with well trusted keys.
> >
> >
> > > Could someone refresh me how public/private keys work
> > again? I always
> > > forget the details and wonder how it goes.
> > >
> > > At work with e-commerce sites, we encrypt a message with the clients
> > > public key, output the file as armored ASCII, and send it in the
> > > email. But what's the deal with the private key and sharing your
> > > public key? Do they need both to decrypt it? Just the private?
> >
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