Re: The future will be easy to use

>* Clear goals.
>
>* A leader, someone who would call the shots, and would also serve as the
>person you'd have to convince.
>
>* Open communications. Shrouding a project in secrecy is a good way to
>kill it. This is one potential advantage we have over the spooks.
>
>It _is_ doable. I know the skill is out there. Wei Dai, Eric Young, Peter
>Gutmann, and others have proved themselves quit capable of writing good
>solid code. Sameer Parekh has done an incredible job with PR. Phil Karn,
>Dan Bernstein, and some others (who I'm not sure want to be named) are
>talking to the government. GUI I'm less sure about, but I'd hope that some
>cpunks would come out of the woodwork.
>
>It is not a matter of ability, but of will.

It is also a matter of funding of course. While development can be donated
time, the rest often takes money. Still, its something to look into.
Handling RSAREF is sapping much of my time, otherwise I'd jump right in,
however I like to always pause before committing my time to endeavors. I
wouldn't mind helping out though. Certainly Consensus probably has some
resources with its own contacts to contribute.

I agree with your points though. Another thing to consider, are some
alternate methods of enterprise design that involve better communication,
iteration of goals vs product, etc. (Actually I need to work on a speech
about this that is coming up soon. Yet another project. :)

Jonathan

------------------------------------------------------------------------
..Jonathan Zamick                    Consensus Development Corporation..
..<JonathanZ@consensus.com>                      1563 Solano Ave, #355..
..                                             Berkeley, CA 94707-2116..
..                                        o510/559-1500  f510/559-1505..
..Mosaic/WWW Home Page:                                               ..
..  Consensus Home Page       ..

I would posit that any "Cypherpunks" group arranged to "write the software
for privacy" would rapidly get bogged down in the sorts of problems that
Raph mentioned, as well as a host of others.  The inter-person politics of
the free software groups on the Internet are amazing (and something I like
to avoid these days).

On the technical side, what piece of software do we need for privacy? 
Well, anonymizing WWW re-servers.  Better interfaces to secure mail. 
Better interfaces to the anonymous remailers.  Remailer-as-delivery (e.g,
mailing a delivery ticket which the recipient would have to use in order
to get the message from the remailer).  IPsec.  Reputation & certification
systems.  Inter-site encryption.  The list goes on (and on).

And then what platform do you aim for?  

I see the value of the cypherpunks list as a meeting point for a wide
variety of folks, each of whom is likely to go off to do work in their own
area, with new perspective on the values of privacy.

The value of the list as a conjunction of pro-privacy folks is much
greater than it's value as a list where implementation of some application
can be coordinated.   If nothing else, the amount of work to be done is
greater than that doable even if every member of the list sat down to
write code full-time.
Not that we couldn't get amazing things done, but...

ObSpoilsporting over.  Go for it, and best of luck to you.

-- 
david d `zoo' zuhn   ---  secure computing corporation
zuhn@sctc.com

zuhn@sctc.com (david d `zoo' zuhn) writes:
> On the technical side, what piece of software do we need for privacy?

One thing that David didn't mention is security add-ons to the "network
computers" that are supposed to be rolled out within the next few months --
the successors to X terminals, $500 boxes with a good screen/sound,
cheap cpu, and a few megs of ram and flash memory to hold a web browser.
I expect some folks to make a good living by writing add-ons (including
crypto add-ons) to these gizmos.

---

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