Re: Building crypto archives worldwide to foil US-built Berlin Walls (fwd)

[Jim Choate <ravage@EINSTEIN.ssz.com>]

Forwarded message:

> Date: Tue, 08 Dec 1998 19:20:34 +0100
> From: Mok-Kong Shen <mok-kong.shen@stud.uni-muenchen.de>
> Subject: Re: Building crypto archives worldwide to foil US-built Berlin Walls (fwd)

> I don't know. But maybe Switzerland, a neutral country in wars,

I suspect that with their reversal concerning anonymous numbered accounts
and other similar changes in their laws and their enforcement that none of
the fully developed countries in N. America, W. Europe, Pacific Rim would
be good candidates for this sort of shenanigan without some legal backing
from the get go. That leaves S. America, Africa, E. Europe, Middle East,
India, and China. Not a lot of hope there. If it's not political issues,
it's no economies, no modern infrastructure, religious, etc. 

Besides, do you really want to trust a country that funded the Nazi'a when
they claimed neutrality? There continues neutrality is a ruse because it's
convenient to trap those who aren't smart enough to ask why they manage to
survive when their neighbors are toast. And it ain't because the mountains
are high or everyone is armed. Just look at Barbarossa.

> such a site could be erected. Of course it is a resource problem.

No, it isn't. I fund my entire site for about $600/mo out of my own pocket.
ISDN, DNS, 24 hour access, etc. That's cheap for fighting abuses of civil
liberties by organizations whose bugdets are measured in big-B's. My main
box (einstein) is a 486DX2/80 20M ram, 2G of drive running Linux 1.1.59 for
the last 4 years. I just gave away 10 Sun 3/60's and HP/Apollo 400's that
would be perfect for this sort of stuff except nobody is willing to do it.
People are always giving me machines in the hope that I can either do
something with them or can find somebody else who will; They're mighty rare
(the people that is).

I'm in the process of looking at DirectPC for a means to give my domain a
fully functional mobile site. I'm looking at a couple of hundred dollars a
month for that over a thousand or so for the hardware. Use Linux and run it
off your car (Ok, I've a Brono II so it's a bit more convenient) via a
converter. People are pretty intrigued when I put the dish in the back and
drive around. Setup is easy, pull the dish from the back and clamp it on the
baggage rack and site it. Hook a cell phone up for uplinks and sit back with
a 400k max downlink. What's really cool is the dish I've been playing with
has a DirectPC lmb and two DSS lmb's as well. The whole setup was less than
$500 (minus the DSS tuners).

I recognize that say $1k/mo. is a lot for most folks but the real interesting
question is why the better funded cpunks aren't doing this sort of stuff
when they claim such committment to the cause. Gilmore, TC May, etc. are
clearly financialy capable of such activities. Such organizations as EFF and
EF-Texas/Georgia clearly could raise these sorts of funds to further their
suggestions to the rest of us, yet they don't. The best we get from them is
requests for us to do it alone.

There are times when I read some of May, Gilmore, Declan, etc. missives and
wonder who it is they REALLY work for. Why is it they consistently don't
follow through on their own suggestions?

> But nowadays storage is getting cheaper. If one has a server machine,
> it shouldn't be too big a problem to set up an archive.

Yeah, two hours of work and it's there. Dirt simple.

> to obtain a compiler and run the installation script. That way
> storage space can be highly reduced.

I'm buying 3G drives for less than $200 and I checked with John Young's
archive and his entire archive is a tad over 200M. My guess is the entire
web contents regarding crypto could be put down in a couple of gigs.

Technical resources are not the issue. It's finding people who are willing
to put themselves in harms way for their beliefs. Very few people have the
strength of their convictions (most likely because they don't have any). I'd
say most folks are motivated by mental masturbation.



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