Re: law vs technology

["L. McCarthy" <lmccarth@ducie.cs.umass.edu>]

Wei Dai writes:
> If you have a certain amount of time to spend on
> advancing the cause of greater personal privacy (or freedom, or
> cryptoanarchy, or whatever), can you do it better by using the
> time to learn about cryptography and develop the tools to
> protect privacy, or by convincing your government not to invade
> your privacy?  I argue that since there are many more people
> doing the former (EFF, CPSR, etc) than latter, that you'd be
> more effective if you spent the time on the former.

[Presumably you meant, "many more people doing the *latter* than *former*"]

Speaking strictly for myself, I agree. I'm relatively well-positioned to
design and produce privacy- and security-preserving protocols and programs.
OTOH, while I find politics absorbing, I don't have any special expertise or
influence. Once the legal scholars start to debate legislation, I step out
of the way.

There is, however, an awfully wide spectrum of interests and abilities 
among the subscribers to this list, from what I can tell. Plenty of people
here lack some of the requisite technical skills, but can offer significant
assistance in other ways. So I think your point applies to some people here,
but not everyone. 

I'm reminded of the controversy over the essential identity of cypherpunks.
There was interminable wrangling over who (if anyone) "owned" the list, 
whether the list and Cypherpunks were identical, etc. AFAI can tell, the list
comprises many of both run-of-the-mill privacy/security advocates (whatever 
that means) and Cypherpunks according to strict definitions as written by Tim 
and others.

As a separate issue, there are quite a few vocal opponents of groups such as
EFF on the list. I've no idea whether there's a silent majority ;) of lurkers
who fully support EFF et al., but I suspect a sizable chunk of the list
population disagrees that there are many people really fighting invasive govt.
action.

-L. Futplex McCarthy [seeking summer work, with a background in theoretical
                      computer science; private email inquiries welcomed]