[internaut]

As I am the person doing some of the legwork to establish the body of Users/Subscribers for the alt.wb service (in my spare time), I would like to request that this action NOT be taken at this time. I am as anxious as anyone to see this become a reality, but I have learned over the years that both information services and sex can be ruined by prematurity.

There, I've admitted it, I am not ready yet (nor are the Users).

If you think that you are the whistleblower moderator, fine. Be one. But we need a completely unmoderated group. If you think you have any right to hold up an unmoderated group to squeeze through your own bottleneck, please go elsewhere. I admire and appreciate your work to gain mainstream acceptance of this group. But we have a great deal to lose through `premature' publicizing this project. Anonymous servers, if they hadn't been `sneaked on' to the net, would probably be specifically banned if news and network administrators were forewarned of their presence. Now I see an awful lot of backpeddling and fence-hopping by these hypocrites on e.g. news.admin.policy who say ``Oh gee, we think anonymity is *great*, we just want to control where you can use it.'' If it weren't for pioneering and underground cypherpunk work in this area, I believe the statement would be ``that issue was brought up, and they have been specifically banned from the network because anonymity is worthless and only for cowards and criminals.'' You are talking to many people (i.e. bureacrats and legislators) who may be totally displaced and bypassed (i.e. lose illegitimate power) by this service. There are a great many people you are talking to, I think, whose every interest is to totally castrate the project of any `offensiveness'. I think you are trying to operate on a much more respectable level than is possible currently. That level can only be attained by a gradual evolution of the medium, starting with something rather crude, kludgy, and unsophisticated.

Not enough people are educated enough to use it.

we are not trying to get everyone in the U.S. to understand how this works immediately. This is an impossible goal. Your efforts amount to singlehandedly educating the public about the Internet. To most, the idea of a worldwide bulletin board is mindboggling enough. If you wait until everybody and his grandma know what you are talking about, I'll be dead by then. If you wait until every legislator and bureacrat understands it, the earth will have crumbled before you finish. There are plenty of sophisticated people who can benefit from this *immediately*. We are starting something with training wheels. If we were IBM we would be doing it like you have in mind, an incredible backroom strategizing effort before a massive and highly publicized public rollout with great hype and fanfare. But we are not IBM. We are cypherpunks. We are the silent underground who slips radical new conquests past people before they even realize it. Anything less is too formal, fragile, and lifeless. We are not waiting for you to come out with your Press Kit before this thing starts.

- We haven't figured out who'll be polled to send in msgs and exactly HOW we'll offer them some sort of anonymity and what they need to do afterward.

polled? sounds like an election, like something democratic, like something that can be twisted by a misguided majority. Again, you sound like you are looking for a group with high quality control. Unfortunately, I think this goal is largely antithetical the essential spirit of the whistleblower idea. The whistleblower is alone and isolated, almost by definition. Your ideas on filtering incoming messages, gained from those you've talked to, sound rather naive and dangerous to me. You're welcome to set up all these mechanisms outside of a *totally*free* group and `ride' on the traffic therein. But don't ever propose tampering with that traffic in a centralized fashion. You will be badly burned.

Not a single cpunk has yet submitted any suggestions to me for the Guidelines as I have asked twice. Not one person. Do that first, O Verbose Ones!

I think a FAQ posted to the group is an excellent idea. In fact I am considering putting one up here. But if the group hasn't even been created yet, we have nowhere to post. The FAQ should come as soon as possible, but *after* the creation of the group. And if there are a lot of conflicting demands on a single group, than a FAQ that everyone agrees to would be impossible to come up with amidst all the objections. I just don't get it. This is a group like any other. Why do you think the whole international public has to be prepared for its creation by you personally? People have to judge for themselves what to post, and how reliable the mechanisms are. Sure, we will give the facts on the security of the medium in the FAQ. But if they don't trust it (and there will be plenty of reasons not to) then they shouldn't risk it. If anywhere else there should be less content restrictions and our overseeing `recommendations' (i.e. dictations) on postings.

Have you heard of the Declaration of Independence? They prepared that document well, got all their Ducks in a Row and it's lasted for over 200 years. How many decades do you think a good WB system could last/evolve for? I ask only that you engage your long-range vision for a moment.

There was an interim government prior to the passage of this document. And there was enormous haggling over the content of it, with many compromises. The document is not perfect. There are flaws and cracks that have poked through after 200 years. Do you think our judicial system is as effective as possible? Do you think our legislative system is the most representative of people's expectations of and directives to their subservient government? Do you think our government today truly represents, in all ways, the intentions of its founders? Do you think they considered all possible scenarios? Do you think they would not want to make some minor adjustments or major changes after seeing 200 years pass from their noble experiment? Do you think that anything that is dynamic can be static? Our democratic system, at the time of its inception, was almost radically experimental. The broad commitment to state and human rights, to the exclusion of federal ones, was quite flabbergasting to the slaves of the European model...

Anybody can put a box out on the street and say "everybody put your complaints in here," but it takes some real thinkers to put out a serious whistleblower system.

Look at everything that is efficient in the world, and you will see that it is so because of *independently operating* components, with minimized centralized control. When you want to get on your car and go somewhere, you don't submit any proposals to a government agency for a Transportation Plan. The capitalist system works (and certain others, which shall remain nameless, have failed) precisely because everybody pursues and uses money *independently*. If they have an idea how to run a business, they just start one (with great hassle from government regulations). Usenet works because every server keeps abreast of all articles *independently*. Message transmission on the internet is so reliable because virtually an infinite number of routing pathways exist that a message can take, avoiding any obstacles, each component performing its job *independently*. Now, let me hear again how you want us to submit all our public keys to you, submit the group guidelines for your personal perusal (and presumably veto), and wait for all your congressional friends to understand the concept? And how this will ultimately lead to an ideal and robust system? You simply don't understand. This idea is bigger than you, it is bigger than me. Anyone who tries to wrap themselves completely around it will explode from the pressure. This system will *grow* *itself* to become extremely sophisticated and respected. Let us not smother the sapling with misguided preconceptions for nourishment.

There are other excellent reasons to keep it in our collective pants for a while, but if THESE don't convince you, then perhaps I am asking the wrong group of folks to help get this started properly.

`Let's' start a mailing group for `nambypambypunks'. `We'll' get George ``Wouldn't be Prudent at this Juncture'' Bush to join. In fact, `we' better even start it until `we're' sure he likes the idea. p.s. cypherpunks, I certainly don't claim to speak for the group as a whole (such a task would be impossible no matter *what* is said) but I am becoming a bit disenchanted and disillusioned with some of the opinions expressed herein. Is it just that the weasels are more vocal?