almost@riseup.net (Mon 12/06/10 at 10:13 AM +0100):
Also I didn't realize Cryptome was ever the first to leak anything. They typically just linked to stuff that was already out there - and I thought that was the point. Show how damaging publicly available information can be.
The 'first' to leak anything is a needlessly huge claim, but Cryptome was very early and very focused. It began in the context of the Cypherpunks list, which served that time as a kind of coordination point for, amidst lots of ravings, efforts to make cryptography more 'open' (I'm ever-more reluctant to use that word, and in the context of 'opening' techniques that primarily serve to *close* things the irony becomes very poignant). This mainly consisted of challenging its militarization (and consequent criminalization by anyone not sanctioned by the ~military), but it led to some other astounding projects -- for example distributed-computing projects like SETI@home[1] can all trace their origins to Lucky Green's wish that he could exploit all the CPU cycles wasted worldwide running Windows screensavers. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects ...though Vernor Vinge's name was regularly invoked on the list (esp _True Names_), so even then the issue wasn't 'F1RST!!!'. Rather, the ethic of the list was something more like the IETF's 'rough consensus and running code,' just without the consensus bit. Let's just say it wouldn't take long to come up with a "How many cypherpunks does it take to screw in a lightbulb?" joke. Your assumption that Cryptome typically linked to stuff is completely off, but in a useful way, one that says a lot about where the net has drifted over all these years: from a society of 'maintainer'-driven sites, to a delusional 'ecology' of eden where things magically just seem to 'be' there (until they're not!), to lately this mystified 'cloud' stuff (I'll merely gesture in the direction the analogy points, toward an 'environment'). Actually storing the documents, rather than merely linking to them, has been central to Cryptome's logic from day one. Any fool can link to any fool document, a truth that goes a long way toward unravel the mass of 'clicktivist' rubbish; but physically possessing documents -- whatever that means -- involves much more serious risks. I should probably add that I'm not privy to Cryptome's inner workings in any way. Cheers, T # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE