Wei Dai writes:
If you have a certain amount of time to spend on advancing the cause of greater personal privacy (or freedom, or cryptoanarchy, or whatever), can you do it better by using the time to learn about cryptography and develop the tools to protect privacy, or by convincing your government not to invade your privacy? I argue that since there are many more people doing the former (EFF, CPSR, etc) than latter, that you'd be more effective if you spent the time on the former.
[Presumably you meant, "many more people doing the *latter* than *former*"] Speaking strictly for myself, I agree. I'm relatively well-positioned to design and produce privacy- and security-preserving protocols and programs. OTOH, while I find politics absorbing, I don't have any special expertise or influence. Once the legal scholars start to debate legislation, I step out of the way. There is, however, an awfully wide spectrum of interests and abilities among the subscribers to this list, from what I can tell. Plenty of people here lack some of the requisite technical skills, but can offer significant assistance in other ways. So I think your point applies to some people here, but not everyone. I'm reminded of the controversy over the essential identity of cypherpunks. There was interminable wrangling over who (if anyone) "owned" the list, whether the list and Cypherpunks were identical, etc. AFAI can tell, the list comprises many of both run-of-the-mill privacy/security advocates (whatever that means) and Cypherpunks according to strict definitions as written by Tim and others. As a separate issue, there are quite a few vocal opponents of groups such as EFF on the list. I've no idea whether there's a silent majority ;) of lurkers who fully support EFF et al., but I suspect a sizable chunk of the list population disagrees that there are many people really fighting invasive govt. action. -L. Futplex McCarthy [seeking summer work, with a background in theoretical computer science; private email inquiries welcomed]