On 09/08/2016 07:42 PM, Steve Kinney wrote:
Greetings, Anarchists and Sworn Enemies Of Anarchism!
Without a sovereign Authority to sign off on it, there can be no such thing as a CPunks List Charter. What it this, a corporation? CPunks has never even been as organized as a pirate vessel - no ship's articles, no process for selecting or removing captains, no disciplinary process, no profit sharing or worker's comp...
HOWEVER, I do propose yet another definitive answer for the "topic" of the cypherpunks list:
Information warfare in the public interest.
Because in the local context, cypher- means mathematical munitions, and -punk means opposed to abuse of authority. Information warfare in the public interest provides a very broad canvas to work with, encompassing everything from tools and strategies for network security to exposure of State and Corporate covert surveillance and manipulation with an eye to practical mitigation.
Hey, it's always been that :)
If you order today you also get a culture and heritage of hacking. Not the pop culture script kiddie version, but hacking in the original tehchnophiliac meaning of the word: Content with an emphasis on How Stuff Works and how to make stuff Work For You. But wait, there's more! All of this happens in a context of radical politics, so we can widen our subject matter to include hacking tips, tricks, tools and case histories for technologies like practical propaganda, activist organization, and resistance movements. A Magic Theater with only one price: Study that, do that, improve on that, and assist others to do likewise.
Sounds good to me :)
When people acquire, use and share practical tools and techniques, they can enable Big Things to happen. When people promote and defend and repeat and elaborate and fight over and recycle and reiterate and regurgitate and clog up the tubes with the END PRODUCTS of their VERY OWN political agenda, grounded in Most Passionate Beliefs, we get an identity politics shouting match that proves nothing but our collective incompetence at waging information warfare in the public interest.
I do think that we ought to implement some form of AP. But proof against gaming by the wealthy. Maybe not limited to predicting death. Or maybe just demonstrations, to get the implementation working.
Get good at being Bad. Know the right way to do wrong.
You mean "wrong", right?
:o)