Cypherpunks is featured in a story in The New Yorker of January 29 on the Mitnick/Shimomura books by Littman and Markoff. The writer, Robert Wright, terms cpunks "an amorphous group that gets its name from its militant devotion to the widesrpead use of encryption." He refers to the comments here about Mitnick/Shimomura. More generally, Wright compares the two books, muses on career-boosting and Big Brother purposes of the media's melodramatic build-up of Mitnick and Shimomura, and outlines what might be done about Internet insecurity: 1. Police -- by legislation for officials to monitor cyberspace. 2. Privatize -- by IPs policing their own turf. 3. Encrypt -- like cypherpunks. He comments on PRZ's case, notes possible infowar-type threats and closes: Given that federal officials who would constrain encryption seem to be swimming against the nearly inexorable tide of technological history, these are the [cyber-terrorism] kinds of scenarios they have to conjure up to justify their efforts. And these scenarios aren't entirely implausible. As cyberspace expands, we may see reasons to try to give the government the sort of power it seeks here. But those reasons won't look much like Kevin Mitnick. KDM_tsu