-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Sandy Sandfort writes:

I would like to start a new thread. I want to know what the people on this list intend to do with cryptography in the "real world."

I read this as an invitation to rant. :-) This is going to be a little harsh, I'm afraid.

What do you want? What do you fear?

I'm here for the crypto phase change. I'm here because of a technological perception about computation in general and encryption in particular. Crypto is a lever. Crypto is about mechanical advantage, small actions with big consequences in the progress of a major social change brought on by computation. Computers are changing the world in a way comparable to the invention of iron, or the printing press, or the steam engine. And cryptography is a pivotal point of influence in the direction that society will take in the next fifty or a hundred years.

My interest is more than academic. I am one of the Cypherpunks involved in creating a digital bank. If the 700 or so people on this list wouldn't open an account in a digital bank, chances are no one else would either. The same goes, of course, for secure phones, encrypted e-mail, and all the rest.

Put the digital bank on Oceana and let them both sink together. Fuck overthrowing the government. As my mother would say, "vast plans in half-vast ways..." For what it's worth, I appreciate and admire the Vision. But it's impossible to take this grandiose stuff seriously when I'm still sending my password in cleartext over my phone line. Digicash is white noise until somebody has something to spend it on. Nobody's going to put their life savings in a bank named "crazed-libertarian@subversive.com". Get real. The problem is not a lack of vision or a lack of expertise, it's a lack of social acuity. All those damn unsubscribe messages are telling us something, and nobody seems to be listening. The problem is that the cypherpunks can't even run a mailing list that's easy for people of limited technical ability to use, much less a bank or an entire nation. Somebody this last week posted a proposal about an encrypted terminal program, something that comes up once in a while, and the only replies I saw were from people saying "Oh, WELL, this has already been taken care of - -- just get a TCP/IP protocol connection and implement kerberos and haven't you read RFC 10329-2394032.9292-11193742 anyway? This is all standardized." Except that I'm still sending my password over my phone line in cleartext. Pr0duct Cipher is working. Mike Ingle is working. Mike Johnson and Grady Ward are distributing. Julf and the Remailer People (who mean our net no harm) are giving people meaningful channels for speech. John Gilmore is insisting on observance of the law. These things are for real. We don't need a new government. We don't need a million metric tons of hexagonal concrete slabs floating off bermuda full of "pioneers". We don't need any bullshit toy banks. The crypto phase change will be brought about by a thousand small and unromantic actions. If we are to be visionaries and subversives, let us style ourselves as visionary and subversive bricklayers, working slowly and patiently and from the ground up. The crypto phase change is not about anarchy, it is about insisting on accountability from the government we already have. The crypto phase change is about user interfaces in Windows. It's about plug-and-play software that lets people secure their own privacy in an indifferent world. These are the things that will effect change. The rest is ego.

What Real World concerns you have about crypto?

Talk to me.

Talk back. -- Will "A skilled commander seeks victory from the situation" -- Sun Tzu -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3 iQCVAgUBLV6sJPfv4TpIg2PxAQFK5QP+I7gz5NOi4GdzHToX/MnWL8YjpLFgZPFJ JRnwgxAw2QEMYdvORWckBFN/zgrLs7CTlgDT5Pz+uT2qEeYEXX/yRtMo9LLANeqe 8Gy8CnFWFCoC0s8Mt5rG96fG6Y4YAEAnRuYj0ZRb5vb3daU8+GPhfaXp6tr27H3a xkOioJoDG74= =L0+J -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----