corporate bashing

[Alex Strasheim <cp@proust.suba.com>]

There have been some recent posts here flaming AT&T, Netscape, and people 
like Matt and Jeff who work for them.  These posts seem to come out a 
paranoid mindset that distrusts any institution with power, and a 
romantic idea that the cypherpunks are subversive idealists fighting for 
truth and justice in the face of overwhelmingly powerful opponents.

The truth is that several important institutions have contributed a lot 
to the fight for privacy.  That may not be romantic, and it may not fit 
well with some people's adolescent fantasies, but it is what's actually 
happened.

The New York Times, the most influential paper in America, has 
consistently argued against censorship on the net.  

MIT, one of our most prestigious universities, has taken on the free
distribution of strong crypto tools and lent considerable credibility to
Phil Zimmermann. 

AT&T funded the research Matt Blaze did which deomonstrated that a forge
chip would interoperate with an escrowed one.  If we had to pick one
single thing that killed clipper, it would probably be that
deomonstration. 

Netscape not only put crypto into its products, it's opening them up so
that they'll talk to other people's products.  This is a big step forward: 
even if Netscape caves into GAK, you'll be able to talk to one of Sameer's
Apache-SSL servers in the Netherlands.  GAK is unenforceable if standards 
are open and interoperability is possible.  And despite the complaints of 
many here, Netscape has taken a strong stand aginst GAK and ITAR.

Even Microsoft's Bill Gates has apparently written well and persuasively 
aginst GAK.

None of this is conincidental, and if you don't understand why you ought 
to read Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom".

We are not extremists.  There is nothing extreme about believing that an
email you send to your spouse or your friend ought to be private, or that
people ought to be able to read and write about whatever subject interests
them.  The extremists are those who are fighting so hard to preserve the
possibility of totalitarianism.