From: Perry E. Metzger <perry@piermont.com> To: James Glave <james@wired.com> Cc: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>; cypherpunks@toad.com; cryptography@c2.net; dcsb@ai.mit.edu Subject: Re: Anyone Striking? Date: Monday, December 14, 1998 10:06 AM

James Glave writes:

...

Anyone participating in the strike today? I'd like to possibly visit this with a news story...

I find it exceptionally unlikely that many people are participating in this. Whomever called the thing was not thinking very clearly. You need at least several weeks notice for such a thing to work, and the two or three days notice (at most) that was given was way too small. A strike of this nature might work, but only if someone with political sense were organizing it.

What would be the usefulness of this, anyway? Most of us who know and care about this issue are already working in the field of cryptography or computer security at some level--how will slowing our projects down by a day help our cause? How will refusing to design strong systems that use cryptography send a message to the government that their meddling won't keep us from designing such systems?

Perry

--John Kelsey, kelsey@counterpane.com / kelsey@plnet.net NEW PGP print = 5D91 6F57 2646 83F9 6D7F 9C87 886D 88AF