Re: "Code Warriors" Article in "Metro" Newspaper

[doug@netcom5.netcom.com (Doug Merritt)]

tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) said:
>Julian Dibbell's excellent article that appeared in the "Village
>Voice" (August 3rd, cover story) is the *cover story* as well in the
>latest "Metro" newspaper, the free San Jose area paper (but we get it
>down here in Santa Cruz as well).

Over lunch yesterday I was telling a friend (who had previously exhorted me
to find folks on the net more appropriate than sci.crypt to discuss
crypto schemes with) about discovering cypherpunks, and on our way out he
noticed this Metro issue, commenting "Zeitgeist." Quite. :-)

It quotes Tim, btw:
	You can get further away in cyberspace than you could in going
	to Alpha Centauri", says Tim May, and he should know. Before he
	retired seven years agao, a wealthy man at age 34, May was a
	reasonably illustrious corporate physicist. Now he's a Cypherpunk,
	part of a loose-knit band of scrappy, libertarian-leaning computer
	jockeys who have dedicated themselves to perfecting and promoting
	the art of disappearing into the virtual hinterlands. Concentrated
	in Silicon Valley but spread out across the country and as far
	away as Finland, the Cypherpunks maintain daily e-mail contact,
	collaboratively creating and distributing practical software answers
	to modern cryptography's central question: How to wrap a piece
	of digital information in mathematical complexity so dense that
	only literally astronomical expenditures of computer time can breach
	it?

	"Some of these things sound like just a bunch of fucking numbers,"
	May explains. "But what they really are is they're things which in
	computability space take more energy to get to than to drive a car
	to Andromeda. I'm not kidding. I mean, you can work the math out
	yourself."

	Well, no, you probably can't, but even those unversed in rocket
	science can appreciate the social value of such calculations...

And Eric:

	"Cryptography is a greater equalizer than the Colt .45," says Eric
	Hughes, the long-haired, cowboy-hatted and not entirely lapsed
	Mormon who, along with May, conceived the Cypherpunks just seven
	months before the Clipper hit the fan. "These are power-leveling
	techniques," he adds, pointing out that the hermetically sealed
	voice-and-data channels that could arm every citizen against state
	wire-surveillance are just the simplest of the crypto toys the
	Cypherpunks are playing with.

Nicely provocative article.
	Doug
--
Doug Merritt				doug@netcom.com
Professional Wild-eyed Visionary	Member, Crusaders for a Better Tomorrow

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