At 8:03 AM -0800 5/16/97, Duncan Frissell wrote:
Kent should try and read up a little. The slaughter in Rawanda started when the government radio stations began broadcasting orders for tribal members to come by and pick up their government-purchased machetes and get out there and start hacking. It was a classic government ordered slaughter. ...
The problem I have with Kent is _not_ that he works for LLNL, and not even that he has charitable things to say about mandated key recovery systems. After all, others here on this list also work for the government (including The Real Government (tm), the Federal Reserve). And so on. No, what I find so irksome about Kent is his obdurate unwillingness to bother to learn whereof he speaks: - unawareness of the situation in Rwanda, though he cites it as an example of why "anarchy leads to mass killings." - he cites hackneyed Webster's definitions of "anarchy" to make some point, then objects that others are relying too much on definitions when they refute him. - he claims remailer networks are insecure without apparently having comprehended how chained remailers work and without apparently even glancing at the 1981 Chaum paper or the followup papers on DC-Nets (which discuss collusion sets in great detail). - he proudly admits to not having looked at past archives, nor I presume at the large file I generated a few years ago (Cyphernomicon), covering many of the issues he keeps raising. - he claims his flavor of "key recovery" is demanded by corporations, but seems unwilling to then just let corporations do as they wish in this regard (if corporations really want it, they'll get it...but not in the GAK form the government is insisting it be in). He also cites key recovery as a middle ground in the war on crypto, thus implying (counter to his claimed support of voluntary systems) key recovery will not be voluntary. (Speaking as an info-terrorist who sees strong crypto as a tool for triggering the eventual collapse of governments and dispenser of justice to the criminal rulers, I certainly won't be "volunteering" to use any key recovery tools, leastwise none that put the key in any subpoenable repository. Maybe key recovery with my lawyer, outside the U.S., but not in any Netscape's Trusted Key Suppository.) And so on. I've taken to sometimes responding to him, but usually not. Nothing delights me more than seeing some long rambling criticism of us, and our work, and then deleting it. Kent is just one of several folks who've discovered this list, share none of its core values, and seeks to disrupt it with innuendos, spam, insults, and disinformation. Kent, please go away. --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."