On 13 Jul 96 at 0:37, Arun Mehta wrote: [..]

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1) Collect the e-mail addresses as Allen suggested (including those in Hongkong), and send them a single, short message offering to teach them free of cost how to use pgp and all the goodies at http://www.eskimo.com/~joelm/cbsw.html

Might be condescending. 'Civilized white man brings PGP to the barbarians...'

Look around you: while "civilized", "white" and "man" might characterize the vast (?) majority on this list, I'm sure that's not the universe on cypherpunks. And how does it matter? I'm suggesting an e-mail course that

My point is that a lot of people in those countries are aware of PGP etc. than make it out to be. Certainly many activists are. They focus on the human rights issues at hand, to which PGP etc. may be a tool... but isn't the central focus. It would be condescending to email to many people in a domain saying "hey, have you heard of PGP?..." Chances are they'll think it's a strange commercial spam anyway. The "civilized white man" comment was more of a metaphor. Change that to "Cypherpunks bring gifts of crypto to the natives" or maybe "Cypherpunks civilized the barbarians with PGP"... [..]

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They may well know about PGP, but not in a position to make that knowledge widely known.

That's no good to the rest of the world. Forget them: the question is, are *you* in a position to share your knowledge?

Yep. But there's a proper way to share knowledge. You don't want to do it in such a way as to get the person you're sharing it with in trouble (esp. for something like crypto, where you could go to jail or be shot in some jurisdictions). If that person isn't interested, there's not much you can do... you may end up turning someone off. If you want someone to listen, and be interested (if they're not already), you have to do it in an appropriate way. You also have to know what you're talking about: if you're not familiar with the nitty -gritty of politics in such countries, you'll come off as the "cypherpunk bearing gifts of crypto for the natives"... the politics going on in places like Cuba, China, Iraq, Russia are a bit more complex than what comes off through the media (to some extent no matter where you are and what media you watch). For example... there are many anti-Castro 'democratic' socialists in Cuba. If you approach them as if they were anti-Communists you'll be seen as a clueless kook. Some Chinese I have spoken to are suspicious of the Tiennamen Sq. activists, claiming they were more 'reformists' than true democratizers who were unknown before Tiennamen. Many Iranians will insist Iran is a democratic country where fundamentalists hold a lot of popular power, and that Western tinkering will only strengthen fundamentalists rather than allow a transition to a more moderate party. I'm not saying any of these are true... they are just examples of how people in the respective territories view their situations differently, and that one can do more harm mistaking the situations in those countries. One more important issue: people have to trust you. You can't go into a strange environment and expect trust if you come off as a tourist. As for sharing knowledge... share crypto with activists involved with other issues. If one right, they're likely to use it in ways one hasn't imagined. [..]

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I'd leave the specifics to activists who are already familiar with the respective cultures, societies, politics, etc....

I'm one. Be glad to tell you more,...

Yes, do tell. [..]

It's only crypto, not the Bible or Koran. And let them be their own judges? You seem to want to protect people in the Third World the way the US government wants to keep cyberporn from kids.

No. I don't want to see somebody do something annoying and counterproductive that can get people it's allegedly meant to help in trouble and perhaps make a case for strengthening crypto regulations. Rob --- No-frills sig. Befriend my mail filter by sending a message with the subject "send help" Key-ID: 5D3F2E99 1996/04/22 wlkngowl@unix.asb.com (root@magneto) AB1F4831 1993/05/10 Deranged Mutant <wlkngowl@unix.asb.com> Send a message with the subject "send pgp-key" for a copy of my key.