6 expanded posts ยท every known parent and child
> What's the relevance to crypto or politics of lifeguard? What's the relevance of microphones in Dunkin Donuts? What's the relevance of Digital Telephony II? What's the relevance of 1984? What's the relevance of yet another use of technology by Uncle Sam to strenghen law enforcement and the millitary? I'm surprised at you Eric... I'd expected you jump on this from the other side...
> > > What's the relevance to crypto or politics of lifeguard? > > What's the relevance of microphones in Dunkin Donuts? What's the relevance of > Digital Telephony II? What's the relevance of 1984? What's the relevance > of yet another use of technology by Uncle Sam to strenghen law enforcement > and the millitary? > > I'm surprised at you Eric... I'd expected you jump on this from the other > side... > Curses. I must've missed the "microphones in Dunkin Donuts" thread. ,-) - paul
> What's the relevance to crypto or politics of lifeguard? Almost all of you saw this quoted statement for the first time on this list, because I sent the original in private email. What's the relevance of microphones in Dunkin Donuts? Privacy. What's the relevance of Digital Telephony II? Privacy. What's the relevance of 1984? Privacy. What's the relevance of yet another use of technology by Uncle Sam to strenghen law enforcement and the millitary? Well, it's not privacy, whatever it is. There's precious little speech content in a shotgun blast. Cypherpunks is about privacy through implementations of cryptography. Some politics intrudes perforce, since use and distribution is part of implementation, and because bad politics can interfere with both use and distribution. Cypherpunks is not _about_ other topics, althought they can and do become relevant sometimes. The tailors of seamless garmets should go elsewhere to advocate their views. Cypherpunks is not for the partisan. I don't particularly care if you're anti-fascist or pro-fascist, if you're pro-privacy, you're welcome here. You don't have to be against increased power for police acting in public to be against wiretaps. Privacy and encryption is not the sole province of one political view or another. As soon as an issue becomes a partisan issue, you've lost, because at least half the people are against it. Linking support for privacy and encryption to the support for any particular partisan position, be it libertarianism, anarchism, extropianism, or whatever, is foolish in the extreme. The implied message is "Warning: if you don't believe X, privacy may be inconsistent with your current beliefs." Those who argue that a support for privacy implies a support for some other unrelated political view deserve, to paraphrase Tim May, the results for their own stupidity. But _I_ don't deserve the results of this stupidity, and I don't want cypherpunks turned into a medium for its propagation. Where is the abortion-clinic-blocking Christian right on cypherpunks? I, for one, feel that the lack of their presence is a serious flaw in the social makeup of cypherpunks. There _are_ members of the list who are sympathetic to this view, but they do not have a presence, certainly, in the same way that the libertarians do. This is a flaw. We need the presence of more folks who are in-your-face for privacy. There are some in the Christian right, I'm sure. Why are they not here? They and others are not here because they've been chased out by the anti-government rhetoric. Being against government in general certainly leads, _a fortiori_, against government involvement in crypto. It is not, however, the only such reason to be against government restrictions on crypto and government actions against privacy. I'm sure it feels very nice to be part of a mutual self-congratulation anarchy, but to the extent that self-congratulation causes the exclusion of others who share your nominal political goals, that self-congratulation is stupidity. There is a tendency to argue for privacy by a deduction from some previously held political view. That's fine for one person, but it doesn't generalize past one's own partisans. If you want victory, and not just a few small gains, you have to generalize, and in order to generalize, you have overcome your laziness to think in terms of your own values and not in terms of those of another. If you want to convince someone else who doesn't agree with you in many things, you have to dig deeper and think harder about the reasons and the desires for privacy. Therefore, off-topic posts like the one about gunfire location are counterproductive. They implicitly argue that "you, too, should be in alignment with this in order to be pro-privacy." Get it out of here. A have only a little hope, but definitely some hope, in the power of self-restraint to make a good discussion forum. Think about what you're saying on the list; if it's not about privacy through cryptography and their tactics, don't say it here. Eric
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- While grudgingly accepting the larger message of your posting, I qualify this with the following observation: Eric Hughes, 1994 May 30: > As soon as an issue [such as privacy] becomes a partisan issue, you've > lost, because at least half the people are against it. Eric Hughes, in the cypherpunks welcome message: > 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. Egregious among the ``large, faceless organizations'' is the tyranny erected by the majority, ``at least half the people'', called democratic political government. My interpretation of the welcome message has always been that a cypherpunk works to create his own privacy _in spite of_ interference by ``at least half the people'', acknowledging that these people are not to be expected to grant that privacy on their own. I do not concede that half the people being against privacy means that I've lost. I seek to apply what I learn through cypherpunks to create my privacy even without their approval. John E. Kreznar | Relations among people to be by jkreznar@ininx.com | mutual consent, or not at all. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLepjFcDhz44ugybJAQHrWgQA2ix+775G0eIiQXsXgDjU71Cu+m1xOPnA a5QkYS5J1GTSlVHuD1MKRS/mfa++Kf6U5h2wvpOeLqHVnE2aBta8llTKBPxMQjym 9/1yMNxdtdXbac9FeARKG5UGdLMglNudwrVWdrdfzham6xd0n0tLFVn6IE0OStg7 aGX0DHrdW9g= =ATx7 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
While grudgingly accepting the larger message of your posting, I qualify this with the following observation: Thank you. I'll clarify what you responded to below. re: partisan issue v. direct action When you're engaged in politics, you try to be politic. When you're directly acting, you can tell 'em to fuck off. And I find no particular contradiction in participating in both contexts at the same time. The key is to realize that there are two different contexts with different rules of rhetoric. Egregious among the ``large, faceless organizations'' is the tyranny erected by the majority, ``at least half the people'', called democratic political government. Not everyone believes this. Be politic when doing politics. My interpretation of the welcome message has always been that a cypherpunk works to create his own privacy _in spite of_ interference [...] And do whatever you want when not doing politics. It was not my intention to become involved with political issues as such when cypherpunks started. Clipper changed that. Direct action of writing and deploying code should continue, as well as the political education and action necessary to allow deployment to exist. Eric
There are hundreds of interesting topics to discuss. We have only a limited amount of "cycles" available. There are other mailing lists for general political topics. This one is for cryptography. If Lifeguard is relevant, why not discuss, say, the War on Drugs, Clinton's health care plan, or the state of New York's subways? Perry Arsen Ray Arachelian says: > > What's the relevance to crypto or politics of lifeguard? > > What's the relevance of microphones in Dunkin Donuts? What's the relevance o f > Digital Telephony II? What's the relevance of 1984? What's the relevance > of yet another use of technology by Uncle Sam to strenghen law enforcement > and the millitary? > > I'm surprised at you Eric... I'd expected you jump on this from the other > side...