Re: The Value of Money (fwd) (fwd)

It's people like this that make me seriously rethink my anti-gun
regulation stance.

-uni- (Dark)


why what ever do you mean? i think all american's should not have
guns or crypto. it would make for a safer society in that the
government could make sure there would be no more crime or pesky
drug dealers using cyfered messages to transmit their buy and sell
orders on international email. right-on ban crypto. of course the
way this group is going nobody outside of the internet clique will
ever get there hands on pgp or other crypto software. i tried to
find pgp on local bbs's in phoenix and had to call 8 of them before i
found 1 downloadable zip. the average users do not even know it is
available. thru ignorance of the bulk of the populace you will fail
in your crypto efforts. that is a shame too. you, and your group may
know all there is about crypto and may write the best crypto programs
ever written. butttttttttt......... without everyday clueless
non-internet/ftp/pgp familiar users, crypto is pointless. the power
is in distribution. and distribution breeds familiarity and
contempt for the governments brand of escrowed key system. given
the choice of one item in a resturant you only eat what is served
to you. with multiple items you choose the best. face it, if crypto
is outlawed it is too easy to clean out the net so to speak. if
nothing is agressivly distributed then the people will not have
it. if the people do not have it why waste your time writing it. if
it is made illegal you will be an outlaw. if you have distributed
in major cities before hand then at least the public has and will
have access. 


 


--
          * Spelling errors are intentional and international *
        Jim Nalbandian       netcomsv!lassie!jim%lassie@netcom.com
        Tempe, Arizona, USA                   N7SZS@K7BUC.AZ.US.NA
No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest
reason for the people to retain  there right to keep and bear arms
is as a last  resort to  protect  themselves  against  tyranny  in
government. <-------- Thomas Jefferson                            --

>  It's people like this that make me seriously rethink my anti-gun
> regulation stance.
> 
> -uni- (Dark)
> 
> why what ever do you mean? i think all american's should not have

I believe he means that you appear basically out of nowhere, send
about 20 messages to the list with very little content, and appear to
not have even been reading much of the list.  I may be wrong, but it
appears to me that you saw the list in a recent publication and joined
it sometime in mid-to-late April.

However, not to make this a flaming letter, I would like to address
your distribution point.  And I must agree that the distribution of
PGP has been fairly Internet-biased.  However one reason, IMHO, that
this is the case is that private BBSs were afraid to carry PGP because
of the questionable legality w.r.t. the RSA patent.

With the advent of PGP 2.5, to be released soon, this problem will go
away in the US, and I believe that we will see a great number of
distribution sites go online.

I don't know if the government is going to ban crypto, but I am going
to fight my darndest to try to stop them from doing so.  The question
about criminals using crypto is a crock -- even if they ban it, the
criminals will still use it: that's why they are criminals, they don't
follow the law!  So banning crypto will basically get the government
nowhere (then again, I feel the same way about the outlawing of guns,
but see where that went).

Another thing is that right now, I don't think that every person and
his mother would know what to do if they had PGP.  It requires,
currently, some base of knowledge to successfully use crypto, and it
is really easy to have a false sence of security.  For example, Joe
Average ComputerUser is using PGP.  He is on a shared machine and
keeps his private key online, has a 6-character passphrase (his dog's
name) and types it over the modem...  Yet this person thinks that no
one can read his files since they are encrypted using PGP!

No, this is not the right way to do it.  We need to educate people
about the risks of NOT using encryption, and when they understand the
risks and start asking how to not be at risk, *then* you can show them
PGP and explain how it fills the holes, and what it can and cannot do.

That is the way that we will have to do it.  And that is what we have
(or at least I have) been trying to accomplish.

I hope this makes sence to you.

-derek

         Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, G MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board (SIPB)
    Home page: http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/warlord/home_page.html
       warlord@MIT.EDU    PP-ASEL     N1NWH    PGP key available