Re: Crypto Kong penetration.

--
At 05:31 PM 1/15/98 +0000, Steve Mynott wrote:
> Ummm why reinvent the PGP wheel

Well I am not "reinventing the wheel".

Crypto Kong implements a different identity model.  It does
not suppose that there are "true names".

This leads to substantially easier identity management
(largely by abolishing identity management)

As a necessary consequence of this, if you happen to be
communicating with two different Bob Jones, Crypto Kong does
not attempt to discover which one is the one true Bob Jones
and which is the evil man in the middle Bob Jones.  It merely
keeps them distinct by applying different labels to them.

Secondly, PGP simply is not being adopted by the masses.  Of
course right now, two weeks after release, Crypto Kong is not
being adopted by the masses either, but with very little
identity management, it is far easier for the masses to use.

If you try and shove that identity stuff onto people they
will not do it.  Too much like hard work.  They will happily
let the government licensed authorities do it for them.  The
PGP model clearly has not flown yet, and it is not going to
fly.


    --digsig
         James A. Donald
     6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
     mMObRqZXvGz3OkHZyNWBCEGt5ZpZtUG5Y19i3tsX
     4SfFX2/pUCYwhAm6n1u5xBLG/xL9LYsSZcznxXI8S
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of 
the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, 
not from the arbitrary power of the state.

http://www.jim.com/jamesd/

On Thu, 15 Jan 1998, James A. Donald wrote:

> Secondly, PGP simply is not being adopted by the masses.  Of
> course right now, two weeks after release, Crypto Kong is not
> being adopted by the masses either, but with very little
> identity management, it is far easier for the masses to use.
> 
> If you try and shove that identity stuff onto people they
> will not do it.  Too much like hard work.  They will happily
> let the government licensed authorities do it for them.  The
> PGP model clearly has not flown yet, and it is not going to
> fly.

IMHO, this is pure grade A bullshit.  If you included PGP in MsMail, and
Eudora and pine and elm from the get go, everyone would use it.  Poeple
use what they have and few learn about what they could use.  PGP for the
masses has been a widely discussed topic here.

Unless you can convice the mailer makers to include Crypto Kong in the
mailers, you're not gonna get any mass adoption either.  Still it's likely
to be much less than PGP anyway since it's already been out for ages.
Still there are plenty of plugins for Eudora to do PGP mail, and those who
know about it and need it use it.  The rest, well, they don't know and
won't know until someone snoops their mail and they get a bug up their
asses to get privacy.

Regardless of how good your program, if you ignore the basic facts and
stick to "Crypto Kong has feature X,Y,Z which PGP lacks" you won't get
anywhere either.

Mind you I'm not comparing PGP, nor Crypto Kong on any feature or security
level, just basic human nature.  If you get Microsoft to incorporate it in
every copy of win 98 and Office, you can bet fuckloads of people will use
it.  If you can get all the ISP's out there that offer service and
software to include it, you can bet a lot of people will use it, etc.


=====================================Kaos=Keraunos=Kybernetos==============
.+.^.+.|  Ray Arachelian    |Prying open my 3rd eye.  So good to see |./|\.
..\|/..|sunder@sundernet.com|you once again. I thought you were      |/\|/\
<--*-->| ------------------ |hiding, and you thought that I had run  |\/|\/
../|\..| "A toast to Odin,  |away chasing the tail of dogma. I opened|.\|/.
.+.v.+.|God of screwdrivers"|my eye and there we were....            |.....
======================= http://www.sundernet.com ==========================

At 10:36 AM -0800 1/15/98, James A. Donald wrote:

>Secondly, PGP simply is not being adopted by the masses.  Of
>course right now, two weeks after release, Crypto Kong is not
>being adopted by the masses either, but with very little
>identity management, it is far easier for the masses to use.
>
>If you try and shove that identity stuff onto people they
>will not do it.  Too much like hard work.  They will happily
>let the government licensed authorities do it for them.  The
>PGP model clearly has not flown yet, and it is not going to
>fly.

James Donald needs to be arrested.

Or at least be threatened with prosecution.

I am persuaded that a big, big reason for PGP's success was the threatened,
looming prosecution of Phil Zimmemann by forces of the Evil Empire. The
many news stories, favorable magazine profiles, and general publicity all
caused PGP to be adopted as a kind of "Blue Ribbon Campaign" (a la the CDA).

The fact is that most people don't see the need to either secure their
messages against eavesdroppers or to sign their messages. But PGP was
"cool" and rode the same wave that "Wired" rode.

The recent corporatization of PGP, with the mandatory voluntary inclusion
of key recovery features in 5.5, and the purchase of PGP, Inc. by Network
Associates all signal big changes in this "little guy" image.

How successful PGP will be in the future depends on a bunch of factors, but
the "coolness" factor has certainly disappeared almost completely.

If James Donald wants some similar publicity for Donkey Kong, er, Crypto
Kong, then he'll have to arrange some similar publicity stunts. Otherwise
it will languish in obscurity.

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

On Thu, Jan 15, 1998 at 12:08:46PM -0800, Tim May wrote:

> The fact is that most people don't see the need to either secure their
> messages against eavesdroppers or to sign their messages. But PGP was
> "cool" and rode the same wave that "Wired" rode.

Few messages to the cypherpunks list are signed.

-- 
Steve

James Donald <jamesd@echeque.com>:
> On Thu, Jan 15, 1998 at 12:08:46PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
> > The fact is that most people don't see the need to either secure their
> > messages against eavesdroppers or to sign their messages. But PGP was
> > "cool" and rode the same wave that "Wired" rode.
> 
> Few messages to the cypherpunks list are signed.

It might in fact be a dumb move to sign messages to the cypherpunks
list -- proving that you wrote whatever, when for example the USG adds
cypherpunks to it's growing list of terrorist organisations.

Similarly it might be dumb to sign private messages to other
subscribers -- some of them may turn out to be narcs, or may be
coereced into narcing etc.

You can use non-transferable signatures for private email, but it's
probably better not to sign publically posting messages, unless you
have a persistent anonymous nym unlinkable with your meat space
persona.

Adam
-- 
Now officially an EAR violation...
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

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`

On Fri, Jan 16, 1998 at 03:30:05PM +0000, Adam Back typed:

> You can use non-transferable signatures for private email, but it's
> probably better not to sign publically posting messages, unless you
> have a persistent anonymous nym unlinkable with your meat space
> persona.

Hmm this is a very good point which may explain the limited use of PGP
on this list anyway.

I also wonder whether the low uptake of PGP is more due to it being too
hard to use between different mailers and too hard to use generally for
the nontechnical.

SMIME of course despite bad cypherpunk karma is easy and maybe even 
works between mailers.

-- 
Steve Mynott <steve@tightrope.demon.co.uk>               tel: 0956 265761
pgp: 1024/D9C69DF9       88 91 7A 48 40 72 BD AC  4D 71 59 47 01 AC 56 E9

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is
a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. --A.  Einstein