At 07:50 PM 8/31/01 +0200, Nomen Nescio wrote:
That's absurd. The Taliban doesn't need crypto anonymity. They hold the reins of power.
All they need is authentication and confidentiality, but their field agents need anonymity too. Does the Taliban have a Verisign cert yet?
What would they need with anonymous remailers and pseudonym based credentials?
Stego and/or remailers would be useful for them.
But the more sophisticated technologies are not self-contained tools. They require a supported and maintained infrastructure to operate.
Oh, like electricity. Except in Calif.
Anonymous posters are painfully aware of how inadequate the current remailer system is.
Early years of phones, electricity, etc. Future historians will have as much compassion for the current cryptoengineers as we hold for the turn of the (prev) century folks who figured out how the universe works using cotton-wrapped wired and compasses.
The point is that cypherpunks have a goal.
Actually cp's have a shared interest, like cat-fanciers.
The technology is not the end, but the means to the end.
Actually the tech is sometimes pretty cool intrinsicly, though the lawyers on the list may object.
It is important to identify markets which will advance the cause rather than set it back.
The VC's are crashing after their binge, shhh...