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Proposed info file
Hi,
The text below is what I wrote for [email protected] to be
sent to new subscribers. Feel free to criticize.
- Igor.
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About cypherpunks mailing lists
-------------------------------
* * * ATTENTION: PLEASE SAVE THIS MESSAGE IN A MAIL FOLDER!!! IT WILL BE
* * * HELPFUL FOR YOU WHEN YOU WANT TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM cypherpunks MAILING
* * * LIST.
* * *
* * * DO NOT JUST DELETE THIS MESSAGE.
I. Administrivia (please read, boring though it may be)
The cypherpunks list [email protected] is one of the cypherpunks
mailing lists discussing cryptography, privacy, and social issues
relating to them. These lists are connected to each other in such a way
that all messages appear on all of these lists.
All of these lists are high-volume mailing lists. There are several
reasons for existence of multiple mailing lists that are
inter-subscribed. The main reason is the large number of subscribers and
limited bandwidth of each of the participating list nodes -- each node
can take on only that many users.
Most people will not want to subscribe to more than one of these lists.
If you don't know how to do something, like unsubscribe, send mail to
[email protected]
and the software robot which answers that address will send you back
instructions on how to do what you want. If you don't know the
majordomo syntax, an empty message to this address will get you a help
file, as will a command 'help' in the body. Even with all this
automated help, you may still encounter problems. If you get really
stuck, please feel free to contact me directly at the address I use
for mailing list management:
[email protected]
Please use this address for all mailing list management issues. Hint:
if you try to unsubscribe yourself from a different account than you
signed up for, it likely won't work. Log back into your old account
and try again. If you no longer have access to that account, mail me
at the list management address above. Also, please realize that
there will be some cypherpunks messages "in transit" to you at the
time you unsubscribe. If you get a response that says you are unsubscribed,
but the messages keep coming, wait a day and they should stop.
Do not mail to the whole list asking to be removed. It's rude ans stupid.
To post to the whole list, send mail to
[email protected]
If your mail bounces repeatedly, you will be removed from the list.
Nothing personal, but I have to look at all the bounce messages.
There is no digest version available.
There is a meta list which discusses the architecture and other issues of
the distributed cypherpunks lists. It is not intended to be used for
crypto discussions.
if you want to be added or removed to the metadiscussion list, send a message
"subscribe cypherpunks-hosts" to [email protected].
II. About cypherpunks
The cypherpunks list is not designed for beginners, although they are
welcome. If you are totally new to crypto, please get and read the
crypto FAQ referenced below. This document is a good introduction,
although not short. Crypto is a subtle field and a good understanding
will not come without some study. Please, as a courtesy to all, do
some reading to make sure that your question is not already frequently
asked.
There are other forums to use on the subject of cryptography. The
Usenet group sci.crypt deals with technical cryptography; cypherpunks
deals with technical details but slants the discussion toward their
social implications. The Usenet group talk.politics.crypto, as is
says, is for political theorizing, and cypherpunks gets its share of
that, but cypherpunks is all pro-crypto; the debates on this list are
about how to best get crypto out there. The Usenet group
alt.security.pgp is a pgp-specific group, and questions about pgp as
such are likely better asked there than here. Ditto for
alt.security.ripem.
alt.cypherpunks is indended as a mirror USENET forum for this
mailing list.
III. Posting Policy.
Please note that some members of cypherpunks mailing list may surprise
you as very rude people. You may see views that sound very offensive to
you. You will also see many articles that make no sense to you, are
very stupid, or appear to be commercial advertisements.
Consider such situation to be a price of YOUR freedom to post anything you
want. Remember that speech that pleases everyone needs no protection: it is
the offensive speech that is most often assaulted and thus needs to be
protected. Also, speech that you find silly and distasteful may seem
to be of great use for others.
If you feel that some poster's articles are not useful and offensive to
you, you can set up your mail reading software to ignore all articles
coming from that person. Ignoring them silently has shown to be the best
way of dealing with them. It will save you a lot of your own time. Even
though you are free do write anything, please consider not following up
to their posts with suggestions to shut them up. It only decreases
usefulness of this mailing list.
Eudora for Windows is known for its mail filtering capability. Procmail
is a tool of choice for Unix users who want to filter their articles.
Please read the documentation for these programs to find out how to set
them to filter and delete unwanted messages.
None of the above precludes the administrator of this mailing list to
use tools protecting his hardware and bandwidth from denial of service
attacks. If someone maliciously mailbombs cypherpunks mailing list, the
mail bombs may be silently ignored and not passed on to the list.
IMPORTANT: the list owner does not monitor the content of the messages
appearing here. I disclaim any liability whatsoever for the content of
articles on [email protected]. If you have a problem with any
materials posted here, please contact the poster to resolve them. Your
use of the resources of this list constitutes an agreement with these
terms. You have been warned.
IV. Resources.
A. The sci.crypt FAQ
anonymous ftp to rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet-by-group/sci.crypt
The cryptography FAQ is good online intro to crypto. Very much worth
reading. Last I looked, it was in ten parts.
B. cypherpunks ftp site
anonymous ftp to ftp.csua.berkeley.edu:/pub/cypherpunks
This site contains code, information, rants, and other miscellany.
There is a glossary there that all new members should download and
read. Also recommended for all users are Hal Finney's instructions on
how to use the anonymous remailer system; the remailer sources are
there for the perl-literate.
C. Bruce Schneier's _Applied Cryptography_, published by Wiley
This is required reading for any serious technical cypherpunk (and there
are no non-technical cypherpunks). An excellent overview of the field,
it describes many of the basic algorithms and protocols with their
mathematical descriptions. Some of the stuff at the edges of the scope
of the book is a little incomplete, so short descriptions in here should
lead to library research for the latest papers, or to the list for the
current thinking. All in all, a solid and valuable book. It's even got
the cypherpunks-request address.
Enjoy and deploy.
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Cypherpunks assume privacy is a good thing and wish there were more
of it. Cypherpunks acknowledge that those who want privacy must
create it for themselves and not expect governments, corporations, or
other large, faceless organizations to grant them privacy out of
beneficence. Cypherpunks know that people have been creating their
own privacy for centuries with whispers, envelopes, closed doors, and
couriers. Cypherpunks do not seek to prevent other people from
speaking about their experiences or their opinions.
The most important means to the defense of privacy is encryption. To
encrypt is to indicate the desire for privacy. But to encrypt with
weak cryptography is to indicate not too much desire for privacy.
Cypherpunks hope that all people desiring privacy will learn how best
to defend it.
Cypherpunks are therefore devoted to cryptography. Cypherpunks wish
to learn about it, to teach it, to implement it, and to make more of
it. Cypherpunks know that cryptographic protocols make social
structures. Cypherpunks know how to attack a system and how to
defend it. Cypherpunks know just how hard it is to make good
cryptosystems.
Cypherpunks love to practice. They love to play with public key
cryptography. They love to play with anonymous and pseudonymous mail
forwarding and delivery. They love to play with DC-nets. They love
to play with secure communications of all kinds.
Cypherpunks write code. They know that someone has to write code to
defend privacy, and since it's their privacy, they're going to write
it. Cypherpunks publish their code so that their fellow cypherpunks
may practice and play with it. Cypherpunks realize that security is
not built in a day and are patient with incremental progress.
Cypherpunks don't care if you don't like the software they write.
Cypherpunks know that software can't be destroyed. Cypherpunks know
that a widely dispersed system can't be shut down.
Cypherpunks will make the networks safe for privacy.
[Last updated Sun Feb 16 13:10:56 CST 1997 [email protected]]
[Adopted from the original version by John Gilmore and Eric Hughes]