Eric Hughes says: "It's a fine idea, except there's no way such a group can claim to represent cypherpunks at large."
True enough -- my idea would be to say that our group is composed of folks who happen to be Cypherpunks subscribers. I agree that claiming to represent an anarchy is illogical and, well, an outright untruth.
Curt
You know- I know you all are more individualistic in nature, more anarchistic than to think of yourselves as belonging to an organized "group", but I am getting concerned about a certain disassociation with the political aspects of cryptography which I am seeing by some members of this list- especially the post awhile back which was of the tone of "leave it to the other guys to lobby and be political, etc" - meaning throwing the responsibility over to the EFF people, etc. While I am sure that they are organized to lobby in this sort of way, my original thoughts on rallying some of us together was not to try to form yet another lobbying organization, but rather, to perhaps "fight fire with fire" with some of the media bad press that we are getting as subscribers to this list, and as Clipper-opposers. Secondly, there has been grumblings by certain new members regarding the political talk, with requests for more 'tech talk' - It seems to me that these threads are in a sense mutually exclusive in a certain sense, and could very easily be carried on at the same time. If you want to talk tech- just jump in and do so- but people are probably not going to call on you to start the thread..I just am not sure why someone would object to *both* tech and politics- and anyway- if you don't like the political talk, you could always write yourself a filter. Lastly, there has been talk about the old-timers on this list "sitting back and waiting while the 'newbies' talk over things which have been said before (politically, I take it)- the thing is, the cryptography/ Clipper policy is being designed and debated *now*- I can't see how whateve you all talked about 3 years ago can really be relevent to what's going on in the media today regarding this important issue. It seems to me this isn't a static, circular discusion, but rather a continuous, ongoing thread which is informed by the media on a day to day basis..And unless you all are amazingly clairvoyant, it would have been hard to know all the events which are going on now three years ago. I don't know about you all, but if my privacy is threatned, I am going to do what I can to object to it. I am not of the mindset to "leave it to someone else" to do. Well, as this is getting long, I will close. Julie "I am not an Internet Cult member" ___________________________________________________________________________ Julie M. Albright Ph.D Student Department of Sociology University of Southern California albright@usc.edu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . .