Clipperpunks Write Code?

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

(I've taken the liberty of renaming Hal Finney's thread, mainly since
I wasn't sure _what_ it was named...it arrived via the -request list
and was missing some headers....)

Hal Finney writes:

> Headline: "Clipper Considered Harmful"
> 
> ...so what else is new, huh?
> 
> But I was thinking specifically of Cypherpunks.  Reading the article
> about the group in the Whole Earth Review, an article written before
> the advent of the Clipper proposal, reminded me of all the things we
> were working on before the Clipper forced them onto the back burner.
> 
> Anonymous mail, anonymous posting, steganography, digital cash, whistle-
> blowers, encryption itself - all the ingredients of Tim's "crypto anarchy" -
> in many of these areas it seemed we had a certain amount of momentum which
> has been lost.  If "Cypherpunks write code", how much code has been written
> lately?  Now it seems like our motto is changing to "Cypherpunks write
> letters", to their congressmen.
...stuff elided to save space....

> I claim that our best response to the threat posed by Clipper is a hearty
> "screw you" and a rededication to the Cypherpunks goals.  Let the powers that
> be know that we are not intimidated or cowed by their threats.  We must
> continue to oppose Clipper, but at the same time we must make progress on
> the crypto privacy front.  Otherwise our opponents are winning, regardless of
> the eventual political outcome.

I think Hal is right, though the Clipper controversy has generated
a lot of new interest in crypto issues and perhaps even in this list.
My guess would be that many of today's readers are on this list now
because of the rude awakening Clipper gave them.

Having said this, I agree that our real strength lies in technical
areas (I'm referring to folks like Hal, Eric Hughes, Miron Cuperman,
all the others who're writing C and Perl code, and all those running
remailers and the like). The anti-Clipper work is related, but
probably isn't the core...fortunately, I doubt there's any conflict, as
people will work on what interests them, so the Clipper stuff probably
isn't affecting work on other core issues.

Maybe at the next Cypherpunks physical meeting we can get some idea of
what others are doing? For example, perhaps Hal Finney could
communicate by phone for a few minutes? (We did this with the Boston
and D.C. Cypherpunks at the emergency Clipper meeting and it worked
well.)

Others could also call in, or vice versa.

Things like digital money will require a lot of effort, probably two
or three times what PGP took (just a guess). Wide deployment is even
more problematic. These are "social" issues, not just technical
issues, of course, so progress is hard to predict.

It may take a while.


-Tim May

-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
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