Re: CYPHERPUNK considered harmful

David Lambert <dcl@panix.com> writes:
> 
> Peter Trei <trei@process.com> wrote:
> 
> >      Terms like 'cypherpunk' and 'cryptoanarchy' tend to pigeonhole us as
> > nutcases for many people, and are a barrier to getting our ideas
> > across. I'm not saying this pigeonholing is correct - in fact I despise
> > people who judge a book by it's cover, but so many people DO make such
> > snap judgements that we need to take this into account when talking to
> > the general public.
> 
> Two of the responses to the "An opportunity..." post unapologetically
> admitted that they refused to read the text of the message due to the
> presence of the word "cypherpunk" in the first sentence.
> 
> Shows you what we're up against.
> 
> BTW, I'm not for changing the name of the list, but I do see the logic
> in a more establishment-friendly name to use when lobbying the public.

There is likely some truth to the cypherpunk turning some people off
before they listen, but also as has already been said 'cypherpunks'
has it advantages too: catchy, gets the media imagination, and has an
established reputation, and set of accomplishmensts.

One thing I have been thinking would be nice would be a USENET
newsgroup, as mailing lists are a step away from easy access which
some people never make.  It makes it less easy to browse and see what
it's about, interacting with majordomo software might seem very
intuitive to most members, but not all will be so comfortable signing
up their mailbox (which they possibly pay for per K), and may indeed
lack the expertise required to do the job.  There are serveral
archives of cpunks, but these don't tend to be as well known as
newsgroups.  More people might come across cypherpunks ideas, and the
technology for remailers, disk encryptors, discussions of nym servers,
steganorgraphy, IPSEC, etc if they were in a newsgroup, perhaps even
within the comp, soc, or sci hierarchies.

One thing I have discovered in myself is a reluctance to subscribe to
too many mailing lists, as the volume, and management of the resulting
traffic piped your way can be overwelming (yes I know there are
various filters to split off traffic into separate mbox files).  I
think it is a shame that things like the nym server discussion which
sounded very interesting to me got split off into a separate group,
I'd just as soon see the discussion here, for reluctance to subscribe
to yet more groups reasons, and because it sounded like it wasn't very
high volume anyway.  Same for the stego group discussions.  If it's
all in one place at least I can skim that for interesting things.
Both of those discussions I think would contribute to the signal ratio
here.

But, Peter's stated aims sound useful, of promulgating cypherpunks
technolgy, and ideas to as large an audience as possible.  Definately
a very important aim, and one that lots of people already devote some
time and thought to.  Might I suggest that a newsgroup would be a way
to go?  There are already a number of security, privacy, and crypto
related groups, but they tend to have their own pattern of flow, you
know penet.fi problems on alt.privacy.anon-server, alt.privacy (dunno
not read much), alt.security.pgp pgp usage, David Sterlight fueled
discussions, some ITAR stuff, talk.politics.crypto, crypto politics,
comp.org.eff.talk, there must be a few others.

Peter's FAQ like document was very nicely worded for avoidance of any
connotations of conspiracy or 'punkery' which might put off the less
adventurous souls, the more conservative.  How about it?

Reckon cypherpunks as a group has enough readers to hmm, push through
a vote for group creation, if the majority thought it was a useful
exercise.  A group soley for what?  cypherpunks technology, social
impacts and education, a place where someone would go with security
questions, and to learn about the future of personal and corporate
security on the net.  If a few people frequented it, with the sort of
diligence that a number of people spend time contributing to the
alt.security.pgp group, and a useful set of pointers, and FAQs posted
frequently, it might become a useful resource.

One URL which I haven't seen pushed all that much which impressed me a
lot for a very comprehensive list of cypherpunks technology, what it
is and where to get it was Tatu Ylonen's pages on crypto, and crypto
apps:

	http://www.cs.hut.fi/ssh/crypto/

A resource that would look good with a support newsgroup for
discussion of just such technology.

I would have thought that if anyone was interested to set up such a
group (Peter? - your initiative?), that you could tone down the
'cypherpunks' name if you felt it would further the cause of giving
the newsgroup wider appeal.  I mean perhaps you would mention
'cypherpunks', 'the mailing list', near the end of the FAQ as further
resources, and a forum for active discussion, explaining the name
first, so that people don't get put off, after they've got that far
(read all through your FAQ), presumably they'll be less inclinded to
let a label bother them.

Adam

aba@dcs.exeter.ac.uk writes:
> One thing I have been thinking would be nice would be a USENET
> newsgroup, as mailing lists are a step away from easy access which
> some people never make.

This sounds like a very good idea to me, since I find the flood of
e-mail from CP, much of it non-crypto-related, to be annoying. If
this traffic were in a newsgroup, it would travel compressed over
my phone line, and I might use a killfile on sstuff like the CO$ thread.

Anything posted to the main cypherpunks mailing list and the spun-off mailing
lists (steganogrpahy, remailers, nym servers, etc) could be posted to the
newsgroup by maiking one of the mail2news gateways a subscriber.

> time and thought to.  Might I suggest that a newsgroup would be a way
> to go?  There are already a number of security, privacy, and crypto
> related groups, but they tend to have their own pattern of flow, you
> know penet.fi problems on alt.privacy.anon-server, alt.privacy (dunno
> not read much), alt.security.pgp pgp usage, David Sterlight fueled
> discussions, some ITAR stuff, talk.politics.crypto, crypto politics,
> comp.org.eff.talk, there must be a few others.
...
> Reckon cypherpunks as a group has enough readers to hmm, push through
> a vote for group creation, if the majority thought it was a useful
> exercise.  A group soley for what?  cypherpunks technology, social

No vote is needed to create an alt.group: something like
'alt.security.cypherpunks' or 'alt.privacy.cypherpunks'. Just post a proposal
to alt.config, post many articles seconding the proposal, let it be discussed
for a week, then issue a newgroup.

To create a newsgroup in the 'big 8' (comp., sci., etc) one needs to deal with
unpleasant control freaks like group-advice, news.groups, and David Lawrence.
It takes up to 6 months. On the other hand, many sites that have Usenet have
comp.* but not alt.*. Their users would still have to use the mailing lists or
find another site. To create something like comp.security.cypherpunks (I think
this would be the most appropriate place, since there's already c.s.announce,
c.s.misc, and c.s.firewalls), talk to the group-advice cabal.

---

Dr. Dimitri Vulis
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

In article <PysiBD7w165w@bwalk.dm.com>,
Dr. Dimitri Vulis <dlv@bwalk.dm.com> wrote:
>aba@dcs.exeter.ac.uk writes:
>> One thing I have been thinking would be nice would be a USENET
>> newsgroup, as mailing lists are a step away from easy access which
>> some people never make.
>
>This sounds like a very good idea to me, since I find the flood of
>e-mail from CP, much of it non-crypto-related, to be annoying. If
>this traffic were in a newsgroup, it would travel compressed over
>my phone line, and I might use a killfile on sstuff like the CO$ thread.
>
>Anything posted to the main cypherpunks mailing list and the spun-off mailing
>lists (steganogrpahy, remailers, nym servers, etc) could be posted to the
>newsgroup by maiking one of the mail2news gateways a subscriber.

That was my thinking exactly.  That's why I wrote just such a mail2news
gateway to a local newsgroup, csc.lists.cypherpunks (moderated, with
cypherpunks@toad.com as the moderator), as you can probably see in
the header.

This way, trn groups all articles with the same subject together,
and correctly threads articles that have References: or In-Reply-To:
headers.

As for the location, I'd agree with comp.security.cypherpunks.

Watch out, though; the list/group will probably get a much higher
readership as a newsgroup.  Although this is good for the
"make the public aware" goal, remember that, as far as I can tell,
September 1992 never ended.

I've been very impressed with the signal/noise ratio on this list.
In fact, people often put [NOISE] in the subject line to flag trivial
content.  This ratio will certainly go down if we go to a newsgroup.

One of the main benefits of Usenet is that anyone can _post_.
One of the main detriments is that _anyone_ can post.

   - Ian "that would have been much more elegant in Latin"

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In list.cypherpunks, aba@dcs.exeter.ac.uk writes:

> One thing I have been thinking would be nice would be a USENET
> newsgroup, as mailing lists are a step away from easy access which
> some people never make.

That's a feature, not a bug.  Unless the group was moderated, I predict
the S/N ratio to be <= 0.  Witness the crap in alt.2600.

The mailing list, as someone said before me, works as a limited
pre-screening system.  Given the nature of the list's focus and
discussion, I think a newsgroup would end up being a stable attractor
for the clue-deficit crowd.  Not something I'd find useful.
- -- 
           Roy M. Silvernail     [ ]      roy@cybrspc.mn.org
PGP Public Key fingerprint =  31 86 EC B9 DB 76 A7 54  13 0B 6A 6B CC 09 18 B6
                Key available from pubkey@cybrspc.mn.org

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Roy Silvernail <roy@cybrspc.mn.org> writes:
> In list.cypherpunks, aba@dcs.exeter.ac.uk writes:
> > One thing I have been thinking would be nice would be a USENET
> > newsgroup, as mailing lists are a step away from easy access which
> > some people never make.
> 
> That's a feature, not a bug.  Unless the group was moderated, I predict
> the S/N ratio to be <= 0.  Witness the crap in alt.2600.

I think you misunderstand what I was saying, I wasn't saying *instead
of*, but *as well as*, and with a different purpose, just a comment on
Peter's post as to creating *another* group / list with a different
purpose, one to specifically further his ideas on transferring
technology to more people.

> The mailing list, as someone said before me, works as a limited
> pre-screening system.  Given the nature of the list's focus and
> discussion, I think a newsgroup would end up being a stable
> attractor for the clue-deficit crowd.  Not something I'd find
> useful.

So I most definately agree with the likely effects of for instance
merging the list and a newsgroup with a mail to news gateway, as
someone suggested, this would be a really bad idea, and would open the
list to a flood of junk.

If a group such as say alt.cypherpunks were created, it would be just
yet another group which hosts endless directionless arguments with
David Sternlight, etc. via huge cross posting.

Perhaps it would be better to just post crypto FAQs to existing crypto
groups, to further use of crypto.

A later suggestion someone else had was of a read-only mailing list
mirror in a newsgroup.  I'm not sure about this, I mean yes it would
allow more people to casually read, and this is what I use Todd
Masco's nntp.hks.net nntp server for, and find it a really nice way to
read, much nicer than a mail box, even if it was slower for me.  Of
course there are software solutions which allow you to set up similar
effects your self, but as a standard read-only newsgroup, I think it
would likely increase readership.  But I'm not sure, I mean even that
is likely to get the list some more junk, as it will less of a barrier
to post, I mean all you have to do is send to cypherpunks@toad.com,
after all, and it wouldn't take a lot to figure that out.

Undecided as to whether a read only newsgroup in mail.cypherpunks or
something would be a good idea or not.  I'm sure it already happens a
lot of places, so perhaps it won't make a lot of difference.

But I definately wasn't advocating gating an alt group to cpunks and
vice-versa.

Adam

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In article <43f97c$64n@calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca>, you wrote:
>Dr. Dimitri Vulis <dlv@bwalk.dm.com> wrote:
>>
>>Anything posted to the main cypherpunks mailing list and the spun-off mailing
>>lists (steganogrpahy, remailers, nym servers, etc) could be posted to the
>>newsgroup by maiking one of the mail2news gateways a subscriber.
>
>That was my thinking exactly.  That's why I wrote just such a mail2news
>gateway to a local newsgroup, csc.lists.cypherpunks (moderated, with
>cypherpunks@toad.com as the moderator), as you can probably see in
>the header.
>
>This way, trn groups all articles with the same subject together,
>and correctly threads articles that have References: or In-Reply-To:
>headers.

Some readers may not know they can use Yarn/UQWK under DOS or OS/2 to
read this list as if it were a newsgroup.  Yarn has Filters which can
be used to move email from various lists to pseudo-newsgroups, and the
threading, References, etc, work nicely.  PGP signing/encryption is a
menu choice. A hook for a MIME processor is provided. Trn filters may
be used to filter the real newsgroups before the mail and news is
packed by into a SOUP packet by UQWK.

There is a Yarn list: yarn-list@lists.colorado.edu

More info: http://www.nic.com/~cannon/handson.html

- -rex


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