Cypherpunks are a bunch of happy people basr Discussed were, amongst many other subjects, PGP encryption, building personal anonymous remailers, encryption of IP packets, and a kind of anonymous remailing system for IP packets (http, ftp, ...) using 'onion' servers. These guys promised us some nice stuff for our homes and schools in the near future like your own nice 'n' small anonymous remailer. If many people put these up and a system of anonymous remailers who give messages to each other before delivering it to the addressee is established, you can always say that *your* remailer was just one of the middlemen, receiving stuff from other anonymous remailers. Next, we are going to get cheap (under US $1.000) linux routerboxes that encrypt all traffic you send out to the network. Specially designed for the school and the home. This makes surfing in the childrens bedroom perfectly safe again! On the anonymous remailing of IP packets project the cypherpunks are workng together with the naval security of the USA. Why? These naval security people are working on the same thing, and they need other traffic using the same protocols to hide their own traffic in. Otherwise everyone can see they are transmitting from A to B. However, the cypherpunks had to explain the naval security first that if they want this technique more widespread, they have to make it available for cheaper machines and morre widely used operating systems... something they had not thought of themselves. You might think: "Is all this not illegal?" No it's not (yet, in most countries), and making up laws costs more time than writing good encryption software, so say the cypherpunks. That is... if they can find enough people to write the software. Yes, you guessed right, they are hiring! http://magazine.dds.nl