Indeed, some cpunks advocate both arms and crypto personal offense and defense, but many more set up crypto initiatives (promotional and inventive) to distance themselves from those they considered harming the public image of Encryption (Cryptoo to vulgar", especially those who marketed academic, commercial and above all governmental comsec with the joys and financial rewards of moving among the three cash bovines wearing cowboy hats and chaps, sporting shaved faces and skulls, trimmed beards and hair, tatoos and dongles, or ultra-chic hybrids of all, to match the well-dressed opportunities fronted by gaggles of natsec-cum-privacy oriented NGOs, press and press-agents eager to advise, teach and crypto-party to the world's natsec-privacy combo needy. Sign on by just repeating technology will figure out how to do the combo -- by cheating and deception, rigging standards, relishing NDAs and secretkeeping while faking canaries and openness. At 02:12 PM 1/13/2016, grarpamp wrote:

On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 6:39 PM, John Young <jya@pipeline.com> wrote:

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There are indeed similarities of the crypto advocacy crowd with advocates of guns, which figures because both are classified as munitions and serve similar purposes.

Gun control could be linked to crypto control, and some cpunks, in early days at least, emphasized the parallel. "My cold dead hands" was invoked for gun self-protection and passphrase for privacy protection.

Early days? You must have missed the cpunks threads on this in the last year... search for NRA. The similarities between the two groups and their missions and environments are remarkable to the point they should consider partnering for towards mutual benefit.

...

Other parallels can be seen between cryptographers and weapons manufacturers pursuing commercial, governmental and user markets with sales pitches tuned to each category. Dual use an essential feature, duplicity and dual hats too.

Could be more coming in regulation of cryptographers like gun manufacturers and dealers. And best, the black market and underground and warfare tools merchants and of course informants and betrayers.