mpd@netcom.com (Mike Duvos) writes:
William H. Geiger III writes:
Dorthy Denning is a boot-licking fasicist!!!
William Reinsch is a lying bastard. Fucking politions!! Fucking goverment!! They all deserve a long rope!!
It is perhaps a point in Dr. Denning's favor that her most vitriolic detractors can spell neither "Dorothy" nor "fascist".
Yes. On the Internet it may not be immediately evident that the other side of the debate is represented by clueless juveniles with whom you simply wouldn't talk in a physical encounter. Trying to explain the need for key escrow to a 15-year-old self-professed "Libertarian" (or indeed trying to explain anything about cryptography to a group that collectively claims that discussions of elliptic curves are "off-topic") is literally throwing pearls before the swine.
I must admit that I am at a loss to understand the heat which Dorothy Denning generates on the Cypherpunks list, which seems to be second only to the heat generated by posting recipes for roast feline in rec.pets.cats.
I've seen other people abused on this mailing list - usually, whoever knows more about cryptography then the regular "lynch mob".
All of the people I know who have met her find her to be a pleasant person, and the occasional Email messages we have exchanged have certainly been positive and friendly. While she tends to view the Four Horsemen of the Infocolypse as a bit more threatening than the typical Cypherpunk, I don't think her views are so extreme as to justify the continuous screams of "crypto toady", "government suckup", and "wicked witch" which seem to pop up in response to her every utterance.
I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Denning in person and I asked her about her views on GAK. Her responses made a lot of sense to me. Most businesses, if they thought about it, would prohibit their employers from having information on company computers encrypted so the owner of the computer can't read them. This is just good business sense.
I would even go so far as to say that this list would be a lot more entertaining if she were contributing to it, and sci.crypt is certainly a less interesting place now than it was in bygone days when she was posting there.
This mailing list suffers from the presence of several mentally disturbed juveniles who a) are clearly ignorant of cryptography (e.g. rant about brute force attacks on OTP); b) are cognizant of their utter ignorance and stupidity; c) are envious of anyone who does know what s/he's talking about. So, they feel compelled to harrass anyone who's smarter / more knowledgeable than they are (sometimes using the anonymous remailers) in an effort to drive all intelligent discussion off their "private mailing list", so ignoramuses like Bradley can sound like "local experts". The continuing verbal abuse of Dr. Denning is no different from the abuse previously heaped on Fred Cohen or David Sternlight or yours truly. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps