Re: Cypherpunks Press release

[Dave Del Torto <ddt@lsd.com>]

At 9:09 am 9/20/95, David J. Bianco wrote:
>On Sep 20, 10:28, Dietrich J. Kappe sent the following to the NSA's mail
>archives:
>> Subject: Cypherpunks Press release
>|| -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>||
>|| We've seen the word "hacker" kicked around rather arbitrarily in the
>press.
>|| Are we to conclude that the cypherpunks are a bunch of hackers? I think
>its
>|| time for some cypherpunks spin. How about a logo *and* a press release?
>The
>|| press release would give contacts (email, phone, etc.) so that someone
>on
>|| this list would be contacted by journalists when a crypto story breaks.
>||
>|| If we get enough volunteers, we can fax blanket every newspaper,
>station,
>|| and network in the world.
>||
>
>I think it's a great idea, personally.  I think many journalists would like
>to find third party opinions about network security and other cryptography
>issues, but just don't know who to talk to about them.  By making it easy
>for them to find us, we'd be more likely to be consulted for opinions.
[elided]

I think a media contact group is a good idea too, but I think we should
handle it by having a special address <cypherpunks-press@toad.com> that
media people can send to to request information and that it should split
the incoming mail and route it to a group of volunteers who could then
respond. Question from media people are usually NOT going to be heavily
tech-oriented, and this sort of press list would give the lesser
cryptologists among us, who nevertheless have a significant amount of
knowledge about public policy issues concerning crypto, a chance to be
useful.

BTW, <pgp-help-humans@hks.net> is still operating, and the small group of
knowledgeable cypherpunks there all see the mail that comes in and cc the
list when someone asks a PGP question and gets it answered by one or more
of the volunteers. This would be a good model to expand on, imho. Everyone
learns something, people go away impressed by the quality answers, etc. :)

   dave