The "Blaze & Weinstein are devils in disguise" business is ridiculous, as is the notion of "cypherpunk purity". Cypherpunks is a mailing list. If Blaze and Weinstein were up to something especially tricky, they'd probably post from accounts not traceable to their employers (like, say, anonymous remailers). Suggesting that a person is not to be trusted because they work for organization "X" is particularly silly where the suggestor isn't willing to provide the details of their own organizational ties. This is a mailing list. Mailing lists are for discussing things - like technological defenses for privacy. People may have interesting things to contribute because of, in spite of, or irrespective of their employment or other relationships with large organizations. (And, in fact, they do. Both Matt Blaze and Jeff Weinstein have done and said pro-privacy things despite the equivocal-to-hostile stance their employers have taken with respect to privacy. Brian Davis, the list's token prosecutor :), has recently been sending messages re the limits of governmental power in the context of criminal investigations. Microsoft employees have posted re Microsoft's choices about privacy and encryption/security. And so on.) If this were a secret organization and we were splitting up into individual cells for revolutionary/forbidden activity, your suspicion/paranoia might be useful. But we're not (it's an open list, archived on full-text searchable Web servers), so it's not. And, apart from whether or not they're valuable list contributors, the list really isn't in a position to not "tolerate" unwanted or unproductive readers or authors. The tools which make identity difficult to fix make it difficult to restrict/deny access to an unpopular or unwanted identity. Get used to it. Adapt or die, hmm? -- "The anchored mind screwed into me by the psycho- | Greg Broiles lubricious thrust of heaven is the one that thinks | gbroiles@netbox.com every temptation, every desire, every inhibition." | -- Antonin Artaud |