I think we all agree that the public needs education on crypto and crypto politics. What specific issues need to be addressed? For some time now, I have been kicking around ideas for games related to crypto, and I have decided that it may be an excellent education/propoganda tool. What I'm thinking of is a BBS door that incorporates encryption ideas (probably without using any actual excryption, to make sysops more comfortable with it -- I'm co-sysop of a local BBS and my "real" sysop refuses to allow crypto software on it, for the same reason he's reluctant to house an adult area, no matter how much he personally would like both (although, admittedly, he's primarily interested in the adult area)). Originally I had thought of a game where encryption was used to transmit messages to units (a space-war-game, perhaps?), and capturing and decrypting your opponents messages was paramount. Ultimately, as your "cryptotech level" increased, you'd get stronger cyphers and develope public-key tech, etc., but this seemed pretty limited in its educational potential and pretty derivative of existing games. My current idea is something more based on the net. Players take the role of corporations pet punks, or freelancers, and use encryption to cover their butts while following traffic analysis trails of opponents (digital) money, setting up services for profit (and perhaps to follow the traffic opponents pass through them... leading to more encryption, etc), leading to ratings services and digital reputations, leading to denial-of-service attacks, etc. This could get exciting to play, and would lead to a cypherpunks-agreeable position in the game, perhaps facilitating "market penetration" of EFF, CPSR, and other cypherpunks-friendly literature. Perhaps the game should make frequent mention of PGP, RSA, Chaum and other sources in the literature (a door with a bibliography!)? What do y'all think of the idea? I think gaming is a wonderful way to spread ideas, and have been looking for a way to use it for some time. What elements of cypherpunks' philosophy and methods should/could be incorporated? I think emphasising the cyBerpunk-like aspects of the game (spoofing to get information, copyiong mail logs to follow message traffic, etc) would make the game more popular, and while it might hurt the game's reputation as a propoganda tool (wow-- a game that's a manual on attacking services on the net... how is that good for people?), it should increase the player's awareness of the _need_ for signatures, reputations, untraceablility, etc. Besides, who wouldn't want to infiltrate Denning Associates Corporation and Stern & Light Pharmaceuticals to funnel money and information to Mayday Publishing or somesuch? Seth Morris (seth.morris@launchpad.unc.edu) PS- I'm still having problems with PGP Tools 1.0c. The ptd.exe locks in fifo_destroy when trying to find a private key on the ring. Any suggestions? My first applet to test the library (an MD5 hasher for files on the command line) works fine, though.