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Here is a document I just hacked. I am breaking several of the
Rules by posting it, since I am not actually subscribed to
cypherpunks right now.
Enjoy.
Bryce
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0. Hello
Welcome to the cypherpunks mailing list! Starting now, you
will receive hundreds of email letters every week on the
subject of privacy and social change in an age of cryptographic
networks.
PLEASE, for everyone's sake, SAVE THIS MESSAGE!
If you ever want to remove yourself from this mailing list,
you can send mail to (NOT
) with the following command (correctly
spelled) in the body of your e-mail message:
unsubscribe cypherpunks Their Name
Here's the general information for the list you've subscribed
to, in case you don't already have it:
I. Etiquette -- The House Rules At The Virtual Cypherpunks Party
The Meta-Rule: It's John Gilmore's virtual house. He is the
sole owner of the computer (toad.com) that hosts cypherpunks
and the sole authority over what the users of that computer
(you) can do with it.
Rule 1: Do not _ever_ send email to the list
asking how to accomplish some
administrative task like unsubscribing yourself. If you do,
you will be roundly flamed, and nobody will answer your
question. Instead, send email to , or read
the "Administrivia" section below.
Rule 2: Don't forward articles from other forums to
cypherpunks. We can find it ourselves the same place you did
if we want to read it. If you have something useful to say
about the article, then consider writing a review of the
article or a response to it and posting _your_ article along
with a pointer to the original article.
Rule 3: Don't cross-post articles to cypherpunks as well as to
other lists.
Rule 4: Read before you post. If you are new, don't post at
_all_ until you have read a few weeks of discussion.
Rule 5: When replying to a message, ask yourself if more than
a thousand other subscribers really need to see your response,
or if is more appropriate to reply privately.
Rule 6: Don't ask questions which are already answered in the
resources described below. How can you know whether your
question is already answered in those resources? Simple: read
them.
Rule 7: Don't publically reply to someone just to flame
him/her because it makes you feel better. We are not here to
make you feel better; we are here to read quality discussion
about certain issues. Some people actually _specialize_ in
tempting their adversaries into publically flaming them.
Don't be a stooge by falling for it.
Advice:
The cypherpunks list is not designed for beginners, although
they are welcome. If you are totally new to crypto, please
get and read the crypto FAQs referenced below. These
documents are a good introduction. Crypto is a subtle field
and a good understanding will not come without some study.
Please, as a courtesy to all, do some reading to make sure
that your question is not already frequently asked.
We've noticed that people who post a lot usually have less to
say. Refrain from contributing too much.
Re-read your article before your send it. Then re-read it
again. I'm serious-- go back over it _twice_. Really. It
helps.
Assume any message from you to the list, no matter how
insignificant or casual, is archived somewhere for eternity
for future employers and acquaintances to read (it probably
is). You may even wish to unsubscribe right now and then
re-subscribe under a "nym," rather than using your true name,
if your views are especially controversial or your job
prospects are sensitive.
II. Administrivia -- How To Unsubscribe And Stuff
If you don't know how to do something, like unsubscribe, send mail to
majordomo@toad.com
and the software robot which answers that address will send you back
instructions on how to do what you want. If you don't know the majordomo
syntax, an empty message to this address will get you a help file, as will a
command 'help' in the body. Even with all this automated help, you may
still encounter problems. If you get really stuck, please feel free to
contact me directly at the address I use for mailing list management:
cypherpunks-owner@toad.com
Please use this address for all mailing list management issues. Hint: if
you try to unsubscribe yourself from a different account than you signed up
for, it likely won't work. Log back into your old account and try again.
If you no longer have access to that account, mail me at the list management
address above. Also, please realize that there will be some cypherpunks
messages "in transit" to you at the time you unsubscribe. If you get a
response that says you are unsubscribed, but the messages keep coming, wait
a day and they should stop.
For other questions, my list management address is not the best place, since
I don't read it every day. To reach me otherwise, send mail to
eric@remailer.net (Is Eric still doing this?)
This address is appropriate for emergencies (and wanting to get off the list
is never an emergency), such as the list continuously spewing articles.
Please don't send me mail to my regular mailbox asking to be removed; I'll
just send you back a form letter.
Do not mail to the whole list asking to be removed. It's rude. The
majordomo address is made exactly for this purpose.
To post to the whole list, send mail to
cypherpunks@toad.com
If your mail bounces repeatedly, you will be removed from the list. Nothing
personal, but I have to look at all the bounce messages.
[There is no digest version available.] (We should put in info here about
subscribing to Alan's digest at gateway.com and the 2(?) filtered versions
of the list here. Does someone have all that?)
There is an announcements list which is moderated and has low volume.
Announcements for physical cypherpunks meetings, new software and important
developments will be posted there. Mail to
cypherpunks-announce-request@toad.com
if you want to be added or removed to the announce list. All announcements
also go out to the full cypherpunks list, so there is no need to subscribe
to both.
III. About Other Forums
There are other forums to use on the subject of cryptography. The Usenet
group sci.crypt deals with technical cryptography; cypherpunks deals with
technical details but slants the discussion toward their social
implications. The Usenet group talk.politics.crypto, as it says, is for
political theorizing, and cypherpunks gets its share of that, but
cypherpunks is all pro-crypto; the debates on this list are about how to
best get crypto out there. The Usenet group alt.security.pgp is a
pgp-specific group, and questions about pgp as such are likely better asked
there than here. Ditto for alt.security.ripem. If you are beginning to use
PGP and have questions, you can also subscribe to the PGPusers list by
sending mail to pgp-users-request@rivertown.net with a subject of subscribe,
or as an alternative way to subscribe use their Web Mailing List Gateway at
http://pgp.rivertown.net/#Subscribe
IV. About Net.Loons On cypherpunks
The cypherpunks list has attracted a fair number of net.loons
in its day. If you see an inflammatory article that seems too
crazy to be serious, then it probably is.
The hallmark of these loons is rudeness, and the preferred
policy in just to ignore their postings (tempting as it is to
respond). Replies have never, ever, not even once resulted in
anything constructive and usually create huge flamewars on the
list. Please, please, don't feed the animals.
V. Resources.
A. The sci.crypt FAQ
anonymous ftp to rtfm.mit.edu:pub/usenet-by-group/sci.crypt
The cryptography FAQ is good online intro to crypto. Very much worth
reading. Last I looked, it was in ten parts.
B. cypherpunks ftp site
anonymous ftp to ftp.csua.berkeley.edu:pub/cypherpunks
This site contains code, information, rants, and other miscellany. There is
a glossary there that all new members should download and read. Also
recommended for all users are Hal Finney's instructions on how to use the
anonymous remailer system; the remailer sources are there for the
perl-literate.
C. Bruce Schneier's _Applied Cryptography_, published by Wiley
This is required reading for any serious technical cypherpunk. An excellent
overview of the field, it describes many of the basic algorithms and
protocols with their mathematical descriptions. Some of the stuff at the
edges of the scope of the book is a little incomplete, so short descriptions
in here should lead to library research for the latest papers, or to the
list for the current thinking. All in all, a solid and valuable book. It's
even got the cypherpunks-request address.
D. For a more technical, lower volume, and much less policy-politics
oriented list, you might try to subscribe to the coderpunks list, which
branched off of cypherpunks some time ago, due to frustration with loons. It
also runs at toad, and you can be considered for subscription by sending
mail to Majordomo@toad.com with these words in the body of the message:
subscribe coderpunks Their Name
E. The Snake Oil FAQ, by Matt Curtin & others, located at:
http://www.research.megasoft.com/people/cmcurtin/snake-oil-faq.html
Has some useful warning signs to keep in mind. "Snake Oil," here, means
"weak cryptography," which brings us to...
F. An incomplete cypherpunks translation list:
PGP -- Pretty Good Privacy software.
PRZ -- Philip R. Zimmermann, PGP's author.
GAK -- Government Access to Keys (for crypto, but it might as well be for
your front door).
KRAP -- Key Recovery Access Program (a brand new flavor of GAK).
TLAs -- Three Letter Agencies (the alphabet soup of the US government --
FBI, DEA, IRS, CIA, DIA, NRO, ATF, NSA -- all your favorites).
NSA -- the US National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, responsible
for encryption codes and computer security for the entire US government.
LEAs -- Law Enforcement Agencies (see above, at least when they're not busy
breaking the law themselves...).
ITAR -- International Traffic in Arms Regulations. A silly US government
regulation outlawing the "export" of strong cryptography software which is
all over the planet anyway.
[Please suggest other resources and acronyms.]
IV. Famous last words
My preferred e-mail address for list maintenance topics only is
hughes@toad.com. All other mail, including emergency mail, should go
to hughes@ah.com, where I read mail much more regularly.
Enjoy and deploy.
Eric
[From here on I changed/added nothing (it's gospel, after all:). -- JMR]
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Cypherpunks assume privacy is a good thing and wish there were more
of it. Cypherpunks acknowledge that those who want privacy must
create it for themselves and not expect governments, corporations, or
other large, faceless organizations to grant them privacy out of
beneficence. Cypherpunks know that people have been creating their
own privacy for centuries with whispers, envelopes, closed doors, and
couriers. Cypherpunks do not seek to prevent other people from
speaking about their experiences or their opinions.
The most important means to the defense of privacy is encryption. To
encrypt is to indicate the desire for privacy. But to encrypt with
weak cryptography is to indicate not too much desire for privacy.
Cypherpunks hope that all people desiring privacy will learn how best
to defend it.
Cypherpunks are therefore devoted to cryptography. Cypherpunks wish
to learn about it, to teach it, to implement it, and to make more of
it. Cypherpunks know that cryptographic protocols make social
structures. Cypherpunks know how to attack a system and how to
defend it. Cypherpunks know just how hard it is to make good
cryptosystems.
Cypherpunks love to practice. They love to play with public key
cryptography. They love to play with anonymous and pseudonymous mail
forwarding and delivery. They love to play with DC-nets. They love
to play with secure communications of all kinds.
Cypherpunks write code. They know that someone has to write code to
defend privacy, and since it's their privacy, they're going to write
it. Cypherpunks publish their code so that their fellow cypherpunks
may practice and play with it. Cypherpunks realize that security is
not built in a day and are patient with incremental progress.
Cypherpunks don't care if you don't like the software they write.
Cypherpunks know that software can't be destroyed. Cypherpunks know
that a widely dispersed system can't be shut down.
Cypherpunks will make the networks safe for privacy.
[Last updated 11/28/95]
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