At 1:26 AM 7/16/96, David Sternlight wrote:

And another thing. The reason I've not joined this group earlier had nothing to do with "worthy". It was because after discussion a year or so ago, Tim May suggested to me via e-mail that it would just generate a lot of controversy, at a time when people were so polarized that they couldn't hear each other and thus my presence here would serve no useful purpose. I took Tim's advice and stayed out.

Hmmmhhh...I don't recall the context of our discussion. Certainly I would not discourage anyone from joining who really wanted to. (I also might have said that list views were fairly well-set, and that few minds would be changed by debating certain core issues. Again, I don't recall the context of my remarks to David.) In any case, I certainly welcome David Sternlight to our list. I have not often agreed with all or even many of his points, and I feel he is often abrasive (but, aren't a lot of us?), but I don't think he "wrecked" any newsgroups, much less sci.crypt. (But I've been away from sci.crypt and talk.politics.crypto for quite some time....) There were some flames, which I mostly ignored. Also, a peculiar kind of flame war dealt with endless speculations about his "motives." Utter nonsense, from careful reading of his views. That is, to insinuate that he is an agent of the NSA or the Bilderberger Grand Conspiracy merely because he (then) argued that Clipper was not as bad as most of us thought it was...well, that's just nonsensical.

The presenting symptom for my joining now was a copy of a post by an MIT professor I respect to this group, which a colleague sent me. Perhaps I was too hasty in my belief that we can begin to hear each other.

As a point of information, many outsiders copy our list on crypto-related things for whatever reasons, without actually being contributors to ordinary discussions (or perhaps without even being subscribers). A decision to remain subscribed should be based more on what is seen on a daily basis than on what occasionally comes over the transom from MIT. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."