Hi all! I just conducted an experiment whose results indicate how far we (Cypherpunks) have to go in educating the American Public WRT encryption technology: I send an encrypted message via fidonet! (awk!) I had heard a rumor that fidonet forbade encrypted e-mail, but I had to find out for myself. Well, they do. Now I understand that these sysops are spending their own money and equipment to provide these services and have the right to regulate it in any way they see fit. That's not the point. The point(s) is/are: 1) They ACTIVELY enforce this policy. They don't simply say "no," they check (presumably) all of their user's email to enforce this policy. 2) They seem to be afraid to pass/store encrypted messages on their system. This indicates to me a lack of understanding of the concept of privacy. They seem to buy into the idea that "only BAD people encrypt email." We need to educate the electronic community before we can hope to educate the general public. The text of the messages follow with the names removed. BTW, the text of the plaintext message was "this is a test." Just thought you'd be interested. Comments? =========================================================================== BBS: The Tech Source Date: 09-16-93 (00:00) Number: 261 To: MIKE DIEHL Recvd: YES (PVT) Subj: Encrypted Mail Conf: (0) PrivateE-M --------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a test. -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- version: 2.2 mQCNAiu/jPkAAAEEAMGeUcJS+AfY32cDfy/v/UcA9JdqNOBOl/K37jFOBuCkXCSp lBa ---END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Mike, Please advise the sender of this message that I DO NOT allow encrypted mail to pass thru this system. I expect folks to abide by this rule voluntarily... I would hate to have to block all messages from this source becuase someone wishes to violate my policy :) BTW, the debate about "encrypted" mail with me is MOOT... I will not vary from my position... (just thought I'd let you know in case you wanted to try to convince me it is OK to allow encrypted mail...) please have the other person send encrypted mail directly to your machine... Thank you.. Sysop of Another BBS?
2) They seem to be afraid to pass/store encrypted messages on their system. This indicates to me a lack of understanding of the concept of privacy. They seem to buy into the idea that "only BAD people encrypt email."
Most of them are scared to death over possible liability, like if someone is selling credit card numbers and using their BBS to forward the messages, they feel they could be legally liable. There have been too many instances of folks getting their computers confiscated over this sort of thing. Personally, I feel like it's all a scam, cooked up by those in the DA's office who are jealous because ours are bigger than theirs are. ;) A 486/50 with a couple of GB HD and a SVGA monitor and a couple of 1.4K modems is a pretty hard thing to pass up if you're short on computing power in the DA's office ... and short on $$$... :( -- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@apple.com 510/659-9560 anon-0001@khijol.uucp If you want magic, let go of your armor. Magic is so much stronger than steel! -- Richard Bach, "The Bridge Across Forever"
J. Michael Diehl writes:
2) They seem to be afraid to pass/store encrypted messages on their system. This indicates to me a lack of understanding of the concept of privacy. They seem to buy into the idea that "only BAD people encrypt email."
However, they do understand the US Gov's policy of 'we found it on your system, we're taking everything, it doesn't matter if you knew it was there or not'.
Doesn't Fidonet have a long tradition of feuding and splitting into "subnets", which is facilitated by the way they maintain their nodelist files? An excited Fido'er expalined it to me one night at usenix several years ago, but I had little interest in pc networking then. Perhaps a encryption ok subset of fidonet could form? Anyone who knows more about this care to comment? Andy
participants (4)
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Andrew Purshottam -
J. Michael Diehl -
jet＠netcom.com -
khijol!erc