At 6:13 AM -0700 11/12/97, Neva Remailer wrote:

While Blanc is only joking, I want to take this opportunity to comment on the Find The Mole game.

Moles look just like everyone else. Speculation on who is actually a provocateur or an informant or a saboteur or whatever only has the purpose of creating unhappiness and undermining anything worthwhile that is going on.

It is likely that there are informants lurking amongst the cypherpunks. The secret police watch and infiltrate far less interesting groups, and this one has received more than its share of publicity. (In a couple of decades we'll probably learn who they were. Hopefully things will work out in such a way that this will be worth a good laugh.)

At last year's Hacker's Conference, a programmer/analyst from the CIA told me that the Cypherpunks list was well known to folks there. I don't know if they're still reading it, what with the list hiccups earlier this year and subsequent drop-off in number of subscriptions. At this year's CFP, an NSA guy said the same thing about NSA getting the list. I assume the government agents know exactly what we're talking about. Someone who has corresponded with me privately said he works for a defense contractor on intelligence matters, and he said they took my posts about how unbreakable crypto would facillitate perfect espionage and perfect black markets in information very seriously. He also said "Blacknet" was used as an example of the dangers of info-terrorism. --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."