From: cactus@bb.hks.net (L. Todd Masco) What makes this a difficult issue to call (for me) is that you have partial authority as an "original founder," a much more persuasive position than the bureaucratical "list maintainer" status. Thank god you didn't capitalize those. I think the question is not whether you desire liberty and independence but whether you desire the company of those who value liberty and independence strongly enough to abandon this forum at the slightest perceived breach of their autonomy. I don't. I apply Tim's Calvinist Stoicism stance to this situation. Put crudely, if people bolt at the first sign of encroachment, fuck 'em. There is a matter of degree here which is quite important. A small notification in the header of the message is hardly much at all. Preventing a message from going through, however, is a qualitatively different thing. If there are people who can't tell the difference, or worse yet, who won't acknowledge it, I'm not going to feel too unhappy. I think that you'll probably be able to pull off some compromise: the one that I like most is that of an independent agent or two, automatically checking all signatures and occasionally admonishing those who don't use them. That and simple notification in the header. I am as yet undecided which one I think might come first. The former would even be a valuable tool with far wider application than cypherpunks, esp. if written such that it could be used on newsgroups or even over NNTP. Well, I did say today that I'll get the thing working on my own personal mailbox first. The thing that's particularly alluring about the independent agent idea is that you don't have to (ab?)use your position as list maintainer to implement it, This is both an advantage and a disadvantage. On one hand, harmony is maintained. (I hear the guffaws too.) On the other, the message isn't nearly as strong. To reiterate, I am willing to use my position to send a stronger message. OTGH, pgp is a bigger cycle-sucker than I necessary want to have running all the time on our poor little microVAXen. Yet another reason to have an less-than-fully secure key for that location. Eric