At 11:17 AM -0800 5/2/97, Bill Stewart wrote:
At 10:23 AM 4/30/97 -0800, Tim May wrote:
Users of crypto, concerned citizens, the public Cypherpunks, EFF, ACLU, EPIC, etc. / / Public/Users / \ / \ / \ Corporations - - - - Government - - NSA, FBI, military, / law enforcement, regulators, / SEC, FCC, etc, PGP, Inc., RSADSI, Cylink Verisign, Netscape, etc.
It's a useful start, but treating corporations as one bloc makes it too easy for journalists and government to say things like "Industry wants <foo>!"
Yes, but any analysis able to be quickly comprehended--which is what this diagram was meant to be a stab at--has to avoid complexification. I could, for example, split each of these three main legs into multiple subfactions, or could argue that there are 5, or even more, legs to the diagram. Saying "industry wants foo" is of course an oversimplification, but, in fact, we're seeing my analysis somewhat confirmed by the debate over the SAFE bill. (Though in this case I would move CDT and related groups over to the "Corporations" side...it was probably a major mistake by me to place them mostly in the "Users" orbit.) My point was that the interests of these major blocs rarely coincide, for various reasons. Recall--and you were at that meeting, Bill--that Phil Zimmermann despaired publically over the drift of PGP, Inc. into the orbit of those companies prepared to sacrifice basic Consitutional rights in exchange for being able to export (and to sell to government agencies, which I believe is a major, major factor in PGP, Inc.'s increasing tendencies to abandon the civil rights origins of "PGP the guerilla program" in favor of "PGP, the tool of choice for securing the enterprise." --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."