I happen to like SOF, and I don't think most Americans have a bad opinion of it (certainly some do, but that is true of any publication). But SOF's appeal is much broader than just "mercs and wannabees" [Sandy's words], and that "mercs and wannabees" is probably the subfocus of SOF that most Americans find the least tasteful of what SOF is about. Most Americans don't think highly of mercenaries. If anyone is going write something for SOF about PGP, I hope that the article focuses on anything but "mercs and wannabees". M Carling Begin forwarded message: Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 12:33:04 -0400 From: Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com> To: CYPHERPUNKS@toad.com Subject: Re: Soldier of Fortune Sender: owner-cypherpunks@toad.com Precedence: bulk M > M >This seems counterproductive. PGP should not be portrayed as a tool M >for those that most Americans consider antisocial. M > M >M Carling M > A quote from pgpdoc1.doc: "If privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy. Intelligence agencies have access to good cryptographic technology. So do the big arms and drug traffickers. So do defense contractors, oil companies, and other corporate giants. But ordinary people and grassroots political organizations mostly have not had access to affordable "military grade" public-key cryptographic technology. Until now." Now Phil wrote PGP in part so that "grassroots" political organizations could have strong crypto. SOF is a "grassroots political organization." It happens that some people don't like SOF. It happens that some other people think that the organizations that Phil was thinking of when he wrote PGP are unamerican communist front organizations who should be on the Attorney General's List (if we still had an Attorney General's List)(if we still had an Attorney General). Tastes differ. The point of cypherpunks is that everyone (even FBI agents) should have strong crypto if they want it. I know that Phil feels a personal sense of embarrassment at being adopted by all sorts of nut groups (including ourselves) and he has pleaded for stories of "worthy PGP use." Standards of worthiness will vary. DCF Who, as it happens, *is* a member of an organization on the Attorney General's list. --- WinQwk 2.0b#1165