Moderation, Tim, Sandy, me, etc. * Strong crypto == DES?!

I'm glad we're talking about some of the real issues here.

Tim May said:
> I don't want Sandy Sandfort sitting in judgment on my
> posts, deciding what the Cypherpunks--a group I co-founded for God's
> sake!!!!--are to be allowed to read and what they may not.

Tim, the Cypherpunks have chosen to follow Sandy's lead for this
month.  I'll admit I made it easy for them, but the results are
conclusive.  There are 1311 addresses in the cypherpunks list today;
42 in the unedited list; and 19 in the flames list.  Forty people
cared enough to read every posting; the other thousand either wanted
to try the experiment -- or didn't care enough to send an email
message.  Which, as we all know, is a very low threshold.

If I was a social scientist I might want to run the experiment both
ways, or six different ways.  Name it this, or name it that.  I'm not;
all I want is something that works.  The cypherpunks list was unusable
for this kind of discussion, only a month ago.  It's usable now.

I'm definitely bugged by the community's attitude toward my
"censorship".  Rather than being glad that someone, anyone, was doing
something about the major problem on the list, 99% of the reaction was
to create even more ill-considered, emotional flamage.  *I* didn't
make the signal/noise get worse at that point -- *you-all* did.

Perhaps at that point I should have shut down the list, as Lucky is
now suggesting.  "Asking the list what to do" was clearly not a useful
option.  Sandy cared enough about the community to make some concrete
suggestions to me about how to get the list back on track.  They
involved a lot more work than the previous setup.  I told him if he
was willing to do the work, we could try it.  As Dale suggests, I
wasn't about to waste my time reading the whole list in real time and
passing judgement on the postings.  Sandy was, for a month.

The element I find most lacking from the whole discussion, until
recently, has been responsibility.  In an anarchy, *everyone* is
responsible; nothing is "somebody else's job".  Sandy felt
responsible, so he proposed something.  I felt responsible, so I
helped.  But a large part of the community sat on the sidelines and
criticized, without making attempts to make things better; indeed the
volume and tone of the criticisms themselves made things worse.
Unpaid labor for a peanut gallery of spoiled children isn't very
gratifying.  You-all remind me of a passage from Booker T.
Washington's book _Up From Slavery_, describing what happened on the
night that news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached the South:

    The wild rejoicing on the part of the emancipated coloured people
    lasted but for a brief period, for I noticed that by the time they
    returned to their cabins there was a change in their feelings.
    The great responsibility of being free, of having charge of
    themselves, of having to think and plan for themselves and their
    children, seemed to take possesion of them.  It was very much like
    suddenly turning a youth of ten or twelve years out into the world
    to provide for himself.  In a few hours the great questions with
    which the Anglo-Saxon race had been grappling for centuries had
    been thrown upon these people to be solved.  These were the
    questions of a home, a living, the rearing of children, education,
    citizenship, and the establishment and support of churches.  Was
    it any wonder that within a few hours the wild rejoicing ceased
    and a feeling of deep gloom seemed to pervade the slave quarters?
    To some it seemed that, now that they were in actual possession of
    it, freedom was a more serious thing than they had expected to
    find it.

Most of the people on the list haven't bothered to face that freedom.
Your de-facto "leaders" have faced it for you.  It is a more serious
thing than than you expect.  All it takes it hard work and judgement.
Be responsible for setting your society's privacy policy -- without
knowing whether you are right.  Face the uncertainty and build anyway.
Shall I post you an Emancipation Proclamation -- as if you needed one?
Start a mailing list on another site!  Move this list to somewhere!
Create and nurture an alt group!  Make an independent moderated list
drawn from the unedited list!  Hold meetings!  Establish for it a
home, a funding, the rearing of newbies, education, citizenship, and
the establishment and support of philosophies.  Dead simple for people
as capable as us.  Just takes work.  Who's volunteering?  Just do it!

The experiment will be over in a few weeks.  Who's going to take over
deciding how to run the list, and running it?

If you want to help organize what I'll call the `progressive crypto
community', for lack of a better term, then please do.  Otherwise, in
the immortal words of Lazarus Long, "PIPE DOWN!".

	John

PS: Can we talk about crypto too?  It's clear from the last few days
of press releases that the pro-GAK forces are again working to confuse
novices into thinking that two very different things are the same
thing.  Last time it was "public key infrastructure" and "key
recovery".  This time it's "strong crypto" and "56-bit DES".  What
should we do about this?  Educate the public?

The gist of your post seems to be saying that:

 - yes, the result it is not purely anarchic

 - the moderation experiment intentionally moderated the main list
   by design

 - this is perhaps slightly at odds with cypherpunks philosphy on
   freedom

but that this is necessary because:

 - cypherpunks larger goals are more important

 - cypherpunks goals are better served by having a lower noise
   environment to work in

 - create that environment by any means possible (ends justify the means)

 - people weren't being responsible with their freedom anyway

 - it's only an experiment

 - if you don't like this and complain you're part of the problem


Now it may seem nit-picking to a pragmatist, which is the way you
presented your arguments, but the idea that cypherpunks should stoop
to moderation/censorship calls into question what cypherpunks larger
goals are.  Why?  Because we promote electronic freedom, but in order
to effectively organise the promotion of freedom, we reject full
freedom of speech as unworkable, and impose restrictions.  This lends
ammunition to our opponents.  "See even they realise there must be
limits to free speech".


Cypherpunks main goal is:

  "to promote privacy and freedom through technological means"

and arising from this goal, are presumed philosphical stances:

 - privacy and freedom are a good thing (unconditional free speech is
   a good thing)

 - censorship is a bad thing

 - government retrictions and backdoors in crypto are a bad thing
   (crypto providing practical privacy, and practical free speech
   being provided by cryptographically enabled anonymity)

 - chaumian credentials are preferable to fully traceable credentials

 - etc. etc.


So the question to me boils down to is unconditional free speech a
good thing?

Dorothy Denning says no.  Louis Freeh says no.  The Clinton
administration says no.

I thought you said yes.  I thought most of your actions for the last
10 years screamed yes!

Why cut corners for little gain?


Another moderated list with official sanction (hosted by toad.com,
with your commendation that people subscribe to it (to reduce noise
and increase productivity), with instructions in the sign on message
listing the moderated/filtered lists available, clearly stating the
filtering policy, regularly posted instructions on available filtered
lists to cypherpunks) would have been beautiful.  Fine.  Lovely.

But you set up moderation of _the_ list, with no interaction required
by the subscriber.

That caused Tim to unsubscribe.  It's causing me, and others to argue
for this aspect of the moderation to be reversed ASAP.

> PS: Can we talk about crypto too?  It's clear from the last few days
> of press releases that the pro-GAK forces are again working to confuse
> novices into thinking that two very different things are the same
> thing.  Last time it was "public key infrastructure" and "key
> recovery".  This time it's "strong crypto" and "56-bit DES".  What
> should we do about this?  Educate the public?

Education, and countering government news-speak seems to be the key
issues at the moment.

Educate the journalist that perpetuated the pro-GAK lie.  Write an
article to the same publication pointing out the fallacy
(unfortunately as these are private presses they are `moderated', so
you may not get your say).  Buy the advert space if they won't
publish.  I'll contribute.

Distribute strong crypto (you are personally, the ipsec S/WAN
initiative is important).  I'm working on creating and distributing
strong crypto, and influencing sectors of users to use strong crypto,
rather than export crippled US stuff.  The myth that 56 bits is strong
is perpetuated by journalists outside the US too.  The export
situation is complex, many user groups (even IT managers) don't
understand.  They don't understand the meaning of key strengths
either.  

Break DES to demonstrate it's weakness.  May happen in the next 1/2
year.  Gets free publicity.  People aren't saying 40 bits are secure
anymore.  Cypherpunks acheived that.

Hope that Matt Blaze goes ahead with his hardware DES breaker.  He
said some time ago that he had spare funding and was considering using
it for this purpose.  Anyone know the state of play?  This would be
more important as it would quantify the costs, and would be much more
impressive, and realistic for an estimate of the strength of DES
against industrial espionage or well funded criminal attack.

Adam
--
print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

>I'm glad we're talking about some of the real issues here.
>
>Tim May said:
>> I don't want Sandy Sandfort sitting in judgment on my
>> posts, deciding what the Cypherpunks--a group I co-founded for God's
>> sake!!!!--are to be allowed to read and what they may not.
>
>Tim, the Cypherpunks have chosen to follow Sandy's lead for this
>month.  I'll admit I made it easy for them, but the results are
>conclusive.  There are 1311 addresses in the cypherpunks list today;
>42 in the unedited list; and 19 in the flames list.  Forty people
>cared enough to read every posting; the other thousand either wanted
>to try the experiment -- or didn't care enough to send an email
>message.  Which, as we all know, is a very low threshold.

[huge snip]

If I might make a suggestion:

Some people want moderation. That's fine, I've never been very big on
letting other people choose what I read, but some people want it.

For those who want it, let someone moderate the list for as long as
they care to do it. Approved messages get a "X-sandy-approved"
header. The responsibility for setting up a filter to toss everything
that doesn't have the header is the responsibility of the end user.
Toad will need to filter incoming posts to make sure they don't come
"pre-approved", but that's the only hole I can think of.

Everyone gets all of the Cypherpunks list. Those who want moderation
filter the unapproved posts, those who want all of it get all of it.

Hopefully, this will make (almost) everyone happy.

aaron@herringn.com wrote:
> John Gilmore wrote:
> >I'm glad we're talking about some of the real issues here.
> >Tim, the Cypherpunks have chosen to follow Sandy's lead for this
> >month.  I'll admit I made it easy for them, but the results are
> >conclusive.  There are 1311 addresses in the cypherpunks list today;
> >42 in the unedited list; and 19 in the flames list.  Forty people
> >cared enough to read every posting; the other thousand either wanted
> >to try the experiment -- or didn't care enough to send an email
> >message.  Which, as we all know, is a very low threshold.

Re: the below.  Easily the best and most intelligent suggestion so
far.  Why couldn't Sandy and John with all their experience think
of this?

> If I might make a suggestion:
> Some people want moderation. That's fine, I've never been very big on
> letting other people choose what I read, but some people want it.
> For those who want it, let someone moderate the list for as long as
> they care to do it. Approved messages get a "X-sandy-approved"
> header. The responsibility for setting up a filter to toss everything
> that doesn't have the header is the responsibility of the end user.
> Toad will need to filter incoming posts to make sure they don't come
> "pre-approved", but that's the only hole I can think of.
> Everyone gets all of the Cypherpunks list. Those who want moderation
> filter the unapproved posts, those who want all of it get all of it.
> Hopefully, this will make (almost) everyone happy.

John Gilmore wrote:
> Tim, the Cypherpunks have chosen to follow Sandy's lead for this
> month.

I havent chosen nothing like that. 
I read all the stuff from all the messages from before modernation 
and since then and nobody got to choose nothing. You told them what
they were going to gwet and thats what they got.
Anybody that made it plain that they werent happy got thrown in the
trashcan and labled as being a flamer.

>  I'll admit I made it easy for them, but the results are
> conclusive.  There are 1311 addresses in the cypherpunks list today;
> 42 in the unedited list; and 19 in the flames list.

1311 addresses that you stole for your censored list.
Nobvody subscribved to cypherpunks-censored. You put them there cause
its you decided it was your list an dyou could put people where you
wanted even if they didnt like it.
My uncle calls it the cyperpunks-Auschwitz list. Thats what subdir
he keeps it in in his Dorks dir.

> The cypherpunks list was unusable
> for this kind of discussion, only a month ago.  It's usable now.

I could use it before and Im just a kid but Im not a lamer. 
Maybe you should call the list you stole cypherpunks-lamers. 

> I'm definitely bugged by the community's attitude toward my
> "censorship".  

I know you are or else you wouldna thrown cypherpunks honest and
truthful feelings in the flames-crapper.

> Rather than being glad that someone, anyone, was doing
> something about the major problem on the list, 99% of the reaction was
> to create even more ill-considered, emotional flamage.

I read a lot of flamessages which people put a lot of their thouhgts 
into bu t they were emotional cause people get like that when someone
doo-doos on them.

>  *I* didn't
> make the signal/noise get worse at that point -- *you-all* did.

You dont make any signal/noise at all since you dont even send messages
to the list. (except when you want tell bs about how people "chose"
Sandy to be their dictator when they didnt)
 
> "Asking the list what to do" was clearly not a useful
> option.

Not necessary either if your a dictator.

>  As Dale suggests, I
> wasn't about to waste my time reading the whole list in real time and
> passing judgement on the postings.  Sandy was, for a month.

Howcum reading the list is a wast eof your time but making decisions
for ecveryone on the cypherpunks isnt?
 
>     To some it seemed that, now that they were in actual possession of
>     it, freedom was a more serious thing than they had expected to
>     find it.
> 
> Most of the people on the list haven't bothered to face that freedom.

1311 ofg them?
Howcum you just stole all of the list people for your censored list?
I think that was real stupid unless you just didnt care if people 
would know that your were stealing the list for yourself. It was
really rotten to call pewople flamers just cause they complained.

> Be responsible for setting your society's privacy policy -- without
> knowing whether you are right.

Thats what those GAK guys are for and all those secret govbernment
guys that want there not to be a cypherpunks anymore.


> Shall I post you an Emancipation Proclamation -- as if you needed one?

No you already done too much.

> The experiment will be over in a few weeks.  Who's going to take over
> deciding how to run the list, and running it?

I will. Im just a kid but I cant do any worse than already.
 
> the immortal words of Lazarus Long, "PIPE DOWN!".

Im a kid so I get told to shut up all the time but I dont.

> PS: Can we talk about crypto too? 

What do you mean _we_ white man? (thats a joke)
You havent talked about nothing on the list except how your not a
bad guy for pushing people areound into the lists where you want
them whether they like it or not.

You stole my uncles subsribing to the cypherpunks list and made him
a censored person. He had to break out to go to the uncensored list.
I think your a lamer.

Human Gus-Peter