There is absolutely nothing that the anti-government ranters contribute to the pro-cryptography movement. They are a liability at best. Stuart Baker is even now probably peddling his Clipper chip initiative in Europe holding up one of Jim Bell's rants as "proof" of his case.
Nothing except motivation. Anti-government ranters founded this list, invented remailers, and did a lot of other good work.
Actually remailers were invented by a lass called Stephi whose hobbies appeared to include being tied up for fun. The original remailer operating out of wizvax was a script that allowed anonymous posts into alt.sex.bondage. Then it was expanded to support a couple of other newsgroups such as alt.abuse. When Stephi ran out of cash to keep wizvax running (I have a suspicion it was something expensive power wise) Julf took over the code and the scripts. I'll accept that the ranting faction do some good work but I've not seen anything usefull out of either Bell or Vulis unless that is you are an FBI agent looking to get a promotion from Freeh. Phill