Responding to msg by tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) on Wed, 31 Aug 4:8 PM
I'm not sure what John wants me to expand on here. Others have noted the same sorts of things. Here are some random, brief points:
[Elision of US foreign interventions]
Is this enough of an expansion?
As a newcomer to this list I'm interested your views, and those of others, on how crypto and related topics may be used in responding to US interventions abroad and their domestic consequences. Blending these views into discussions on other matters is just fine; I'll continue to pick out the parts that catch my eye. Much list discussion seems to focus on internal affairs of the US with periodic comments from those members outside. My sense is that our laments about internal abuses of the USG will not be answered until we address the external policies that are used to justify these abuses. Since so much of the power of the USG derives from "national security" responsibilities -- diplomacy, military, intelligence -- and because these have repeatedly been used to justify invasive policies, both domestic and foreign, I wish to learn more on what might be done through c'punks' activities to ventilate the secrecy cloak that shields such affairs from the public. Most of my recent posts have tried to raise queries along these lines whether about crypto anarchy, digicash or varieties of government. This follows my query a while back about how c'punks think US scientists and their technology may be redirected away from national security affairs, where the best and brightest have thrived in the last two generations, toward the needs of civil society, in the US and abroad. So you won't think this is an idle interest, I'll mention that I've been pursuing these topics, with others, for some 27 years in the NYC area in a public planning and development context, as we have waited for the Cold War squandering of surplus wealth to end so that more of these resources might go toward dealing with civil shortcomings, especially through non-governmental programs. Sorry for soapboxing, but this is from a long-time worker among NYC's richest and poorest wondering how long these worlds can be kept apart by the fictions of "national interests". John