Re: Introducing newbies to encryption (was: Re: anonymous credit)

[Eric Nystrom <enystrom@aurora.nscee.edu>]

On Mon, 14 Apr 1997, Toto wrote:

>   I have found that rather than promoting encryption and anony
> remailers, that it is much more effective for me just to be aware
> of when someone mentions a problem they are having that can be
> solved by crypto/remailers.

Do you do consulting work for a specific audience that would be inclined 
to need to use remailers and encryption more than the average user, or 
are you referring more to just "average" friends?  If it is the second 
case, especially, I think that many of us might benefit from some 
specific scenarios in which you proposed encryption and remailers as 
solutions. 

>   The biggest thing to me is to try to point them toward a level
> of technology that they are capable of using, or will be capable
> of learning, given the level of their problem.

What programs do you usually suggest?  On my Linux box, I use pine 3.95's 
filter hooks to use PGP relatively seamlessly, but the multiuser system 
that most of my peers use email on does not have a version of pine 
capable of supporting filters.  I've looked into Raph's premail, and have 
set it up successfully, but it seems a bit obtuse for a normal user.  
(Plus I *REALLY* don't like the idea of storing my passphrase on the 
multiuser system as well.)

>   Also, if a wide range of people are using crypto, whether it
> is strong and secure or not, then there will be a larger group
> of people interested in the government or their employer not 
> interfering with their use of it.

This brings up an interesting point -- should we crypto users try and 
work with the system administrators to get PGP set up systemwide, or 
should we just try to do it on our own, as unobtrusively as possible?  A 
systemwide implimentation of PGP would probably be advantageous, but to 
ask for that certainly risks bringing attention to otherwise unobtrusive 
activities that the system administrators might not like.

-Eric

--
Thus the time may have come to abandon the cool, measured language of
technical reports -- all that talk of "perturbations" and "surprises" and
"unanticipated events" -- and simply blurt out: "Holy shit!  Ten thousand
years!  That's incredible!"
			-- Kai Erikson, _A_New_Species_of_Trouble_, 1994.