Should we become "suits"?

[Timothy C. May]

Perry Metzger has written a clear summary of his position, which differs
from mine. I won't restate my points, as both our positions are clear. (As
disputes go, it's quite minor...if a good enough alternative to the name
"Cypherpunks" were to be invented, one that still captured our
"no-compromises" position, I would certainly listen with interest. But if
something ain't provably broke....)

I will answer a couple of Perry's specific points:

>The problem is this: the name "Cypherpunks" makes us sound like people
>who break into computers for fun or other such stuff. I was on the
>phone with John Markoff of the New York Times a couple of days ago,
>and I was unhappy that no one had yet changed the name of the group
>because I frankly felt that I could not encourage him to subscribe --
>the results would be unpredictable. I encouraged him to read more
>sci.crypt instead, which he has already been doing.

I talked to Markoff at the Hackers Conference in October...he is already
aware of Cypherpunks. He placed a call to me last week, before the
Clippershit hit the fan, but I was out. His message to me in e-mail was
that he wanted to check up on what the Cypherpunks were doing....so clearly
he knows all about it.

As it turned out, he talked to others. I can only assume Eric Hughes, who
talked to him on Friday, filled him in on Cypherpunks doings...though by
Friday the focus had of course shifted dramatically.

I think Perry is overly worried about the reaction to our name. Neither
Markoff, nor Levy, nor Kelly, nor Dibbell, nor Mandl has seemed disturbed
by the name. And like I said, the name is interesting and acts as a kind of
"Schelling point" (a natural gathering place) for the subculture of crypto
rebels and privacy advocates.


>I've been associated with radical political causes for a while. I've
>found that in general, the radicals are their own worst enemy. People
>are NOT happy about being lectured to by strange-acting people. 

I can only hope Perry is not referring to *me*!

Perry comments on my mention of radical groups in the 60s:

>None of whom accomplished any of their goals. You REALLY want to
>emulate them? I've been an occassional visitor to #9 Bleeker Street,
>where Dana Beal, last of the Yippies, holds court. He doesn't wash
>regularly, and he wonders occassionaly why no one takes his drug
>legalization crusade seriously. Hint: they are connected.

I wasn't holding them up as moral beacons, just noting that various
"niches" exist, in kind of a good cop/bad cop sort of way. Journalists like
some "color" and will seek out those who'll provide it. Readers, too, seek
some excitement. The "Crypto Rebels" title of Steven Levy's piece bespeaks
volumes. (Frankly, I really like the name "Crypto Rebels"...I should note
that some of the names we debated last fall were of this flavor, including
"Crypto Liberation Front," "The Crypto Underground," and "Crypto Radicals."
Even a whimsical "Cryptoids."  I guess it's clear that the West Coast camp
is somewhat more radical than Perry might like.)

>We can't afford to lose this fight. This is a matter of life and
>death. Playing out fantasy games about being 1960s radicals is fine
>and well -- when you don't care about the outcome. We can't afford to
>lose, so we can't afford to emulate losing strategies.

Well, I think referring to our activities as "playing out fantasy games" is
somewhat intemperate and misleading. Sounds like rhetorical excess to me.
And implying that I, or the others in our group, don't care about the
outcome is also misleading and, I think, unfair. I won't list our
achievements as a group or as individuals, but I'll remind Perry that I was
the one who correctly picked up on Denning's tone in her Computer Security
Conference paper and posted the original alert to sci.crypt, the "A Trial
Balloon to Ban Encryption?" posting. Last time I counted, there were more
than a thousand replies--some good, some crap, some repetitive--to this
thread. In my opinion, this helped prepare the readers of sci.crypt,
comp.org.eff, Cypherpunks, and Extropians in the current situation.

I'm hoping you were merely carried away by the exuberance of your rhetoric
and do not really believe these charges.

>..... But you are fooling yourself if you
>think people listen to Hippies over Suits.

I didn't argue this.  I was arguing that Gilmore, Hughes, and others, are
perfectly acceptable messengers to the journalists I know. If "suits" are
available and are as articulate, fine. I don't see any around here, though!

Sidenote: I hold to one other fairly debatable view: I don't think reaching
Middle America, Mom and Pop, our neighbors, the Silent Majority, etc., is
really all that important. The battle, such as it is happening, is taking
place amongst a fairly small elite. Others believe that Joe Average needs
to be sold on the virtues of crypto and privacy. Maybe so, but that's not a
battle I see Cypherpunks fighting and winning. If this is really your
point, that the Crypto Rebels/Cypherpunks approach will not be convincing
to the folks in Peoria, then I basically *agree* with you. To reach them,
you'll need Madison Avenue ad campaigns, Perot-style populism, and legions
of smooth talkers hitting the talk shows and airwaves. Not something
Cypherpunks have any intentions of doing, so far as I've heard.

As I said in my first message, perhaps a large lobbying group is needed.
The NRA is a useful model, but recall how long it had to get rolling before
the assault on the Second Amendment started in earnest. In this battle,
there are few lobbying groups, few sources of NRA-style publicity and
funding, and the government has *already* struck. Remember, this is not a
proposal, it's a done deal...our only hope now is to demolish it with
withering criticism, with sabotage of trust in it, and with the rapid
deployment of strong crypto alternatives.

(I don't want to belabor the parallels with the NRA, for various reasons.
Suffice it to say that with gun-owners, Americans had long owned and used
guns and the right was included as the Second Amendment. The NRA thus had a
running head start and had lots of sources of funding. The crypto situation
is much newer, much more abstract, and only has a tiny handful of active
users. Ironically, most of them are balking at paying *anything* to RSA
Data Security to use convincingly strong crypto, so I don't see many folks
shelling out even $25 a year for a subscription to "American Cryptographer"
or whatever. However, I wish anyone who forms such a group the best luck.
I'll certainly support them.)

Back to Perry's points:

>The fact is this: over and over again, every scientific study thats
>been done (by lots of people), every anecdotal comparison I can make
>in things like why one LP candidate did well and another did poorly or
>why one local group soared while another failed, each one of them
>point to the same conclusion: that conclusion is, sadly, that you are
>completely wrong Tim, and that people judge by appearances, and that
>even the most down and out people in our society will take the word of
>a person who looks respectable over a person who doesn't. 

Yes, you've made this point clear a couple of times.

Speaking about the existing groups I mentioned, Perry writes:

>No one can log in to their groups -- we provide an essential service.
>I WANT the New York Times reporter reading this group, but I don't
>want him to think we are crackers or nuts.

Well, while the list is open to all subscribers, it has never been
intended, so far as I know, as a *resource service* for reporters! Perhaps
it *should* be, but that's a much different sort of list than we now have.
(For the Extropians who are reading this, it would be like making the
Extropians list a resource for those trying to learn about the basics of
libertarianism or whatnot, rather than a list for those "already clued
in.")

Several reporters have, at times, subscribed to the list, for brief periods
of time. They were mostly "lurkers." A couple of times I got e-mail, as I
suspect others did, asking me to clarify some point or send more
information. This I did whenever possible.

And with an open list, nothing can be done to censor or stop postings that
make us seem "crackers or nuts," to use Perry's terms. That's just the way
it is. The list is for crypto rebels and people fed up with crypto laws and
regulations, not as an educational arena for outsiders. And not for
sanitized discussions.

People on the list want to talk about digital money, data havens, anonymous
mail services, ways to subvert governments, and so on. They don't want to
just have some unified front that is palatable to reporters. (If I'm wrong
in this judgement, I hope others will give their views as well.)

Your ideas may make sense, Perry, for *some* group. EFF and CPSR operate
roughly in this way, with a paid staff of "reasonable" lawyers and
spokespersons (the newsgroups, like comp.org.eff.talk, are another thing
altogether...as wild and crazy as our list can be). But Cypherpunks does
not seem to fit the bill. We're an anarchy, with no formal rules, no formal
political agenda, and just a bunch of spontaneously ordered crypto rebels.

(Personally, I hope EFF takes a leading role in the fight. They have
recently been sidetracked into stuff about ISDN and away from core issues
like privacy in the electronic frontier. They have the resources, lawyers,
speakers, etc.)

As always, I appreciated Perry's comments. Some are reasonable, some I
disagree with strongly. Two hundred other Cypherpunks will probably have
their own views.

Enough for now.

-Tim May
--
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay at netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
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