X's Last R.

Tue Feb 8 09:30:49 PST 1994

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Disclaimer: The usual. Take this with a grain of salt. As propaganda, at
least its purpose is noble. In this, the final episode in the rant series,
the character Xenon is angry at the evil media-grubbing Cypherpunks for not
noticing, or worse ignoring, that PGP is indeed only "Pretty Good" when it
is considered in its present form.  I hope I haven't lost full respect due
to these essays. I did? Oh well ;-).

P.S. The new finger key server is very happy. Thank-you.

P.S.S Is it easy to modify PGP to remove its "convenience features"? How
about a utility that will strip away the "bare" encrypted message and later
restore it to life. The hell with checksums and the rest. I want my VGP! I
asked this on alt.security.pgp and the silence was amazing. Just a bunch of
flames, and one person who introduced me to steganography.

 -Nik (-=Xenon=-)

AnD br0ught t0 y0u by -=XeNoN=-, an0ther DaMNiNg CrItICism of the
Cypherpunk fad, er... m0vement.

"It'S NEW nEw NeW BuT We'Ll JuSt HiT ThAT 'd' KeY kEy kEY and iT's ByE bYe
DoN't MaKe mE THiNk! THeN, LikE AlWayS, We CAn iGn0re 0uR gReAT SelF
DeCePti0n tHaT wE HaVE a ReaL EncRYpToR. ThIS GuY iSn'T In 0uR Cli-PuBliC-
QuEy liTtlE E-cLuB anYWaY. He'S GoT n0 TitS. hE d0n'T CodE. We JUst WanT t0
TaLK AboUt PoLIticS, NoT bUidIng NeW T0oLs. PhiL DId ThAT ALrEaDy. HE mAdE
uS Co0l. wE LiKE t0 TalK AboUt US, sInCe In US liVEs PhiL. PhiL pHil PHil.
PgPGpGPgpGpGpGPgPgP. Lo0k wh0 SigNed My KeY! I'M oN mTv!"

"But when are you going to write VGP?", asks the quite voice of  humanity,
the ones who weren't invited to your e-party.

If VGP had a "random data block" output format, THEN it doesn't matter if
the Clipper Keys are known. "I'm sending a porno jpeg; my scanner isn't
that great, so it's noisy." Playboy can tag you for copyrights, but if the
fact that "noise" is really an encrypted message is ONLY known by
successfully decrypting it, then even random information highway spot-
checks would be useless. Are they going to outlaw noise? That's like trying
to legislate a change in the speed of light. I wish they WOULD outlaw
noise; it would make my stereo sound better. Phil Zimmerman didn't put a
backdoor in PGP. No, he put a front door. He fucked up, but like the
Founding Fathers who fucked up the Bill of Rights and the Constitution due
to their concern about keeping their Mercedes from the hands of the poor,
he's only human. "Encryption Always Wins." So write us a real encryptor.
Write VGP. Hurry up or I'm going to hire someone to do it for me, then you
wont be the next Phil Zimmerman, I will. Good programmers aren't cheap, but
luckily I don't have to hire a cryptographer, since the equations are
already in text books.

And if you think your a hacker, Cypherpunk, try hacking together a
complicated molecule sometime. The laws of nature constitute a mathematical
computer, and it's so much more rewarding to hack, cause God never updates
His CPU, and the programming language is beautiful and mysterious. Try
coding in DNA or in the language of chemical synthesis if you want to earn
the name "hacker". The interesting people out there are using Macs and
Windows for their personal e-mail. 100 million people who don't have the
time to learn command-line PGP, because their too busy running the world
and getting things done. Write them a fun encryptor and you will find you
have a lot more people who are worth talking to. Since MacPGP2.3 was
obviously never beta tested, it's just not up to snuff. With my guide, it
is at least usable without the frustrating 3 month learning curve needed
for each new user to make own bug work-arounds. At least Detweiler had the
insight to put a useful help feature into MacPGP to make up for the cryptic
documentation, and thus got his name on the startup screen.

I also think that the cryptographers, like the atomic scientists of only a
FEW years ago, should be just as concerned about the impact of their
science. The NSA is our friend damn it, no matter how irresponsible that
friend may at times be. The NSA has been through REAL wars, not internet
pranks. They are OUR National Security Agency. This isn't patriotism; it's
common sense. Tell them we want backdoors to be used for NATIONAL SECURITY
concerns, not to wiretap Greenpeace, and that we want SERIOUS assurances
about this. Let's get the NSA to realize they need to work WITH privacy
activists, not try to ignore or work against them. "Encryption Always
Wins." This isn't about political power and supercomputer resources. Us
versus them. It's about the laws of nature and science leading to
technology being available to the common man. But the government isn't
concerned yet because we haven't yet coded a real encryptor. All we have is
PGP. They can't read content, but they can, like anyone else, see that it
IS encrypted and most often find out who sent it to whom. Clipper also
allows anyone to start recording your Clipper calls NOW, even if they don't
have the keys yet. A random block output would mean anyone could record
your calls and never prove it was anything other than a noisy microphone or
a jpeg of Madonna.

Detweiler became an idiotic child with his "death threats" and "anarchy"
concerns limited to internet (World Wide Wiretap) remailers, added to the
fact that HE seems to be the only one abusing the remailers. He is just
noise (no pun), if this be a discussion of cryptography/anonymity. It
doesn't matter shit if a Detweiler or a Depew takes away our internet toys.
His biggest mistake was to take you guys seriously. Stop talking about the
internet and get serious. Think POSTAL SERVICE encrypted remailing
services, where the pass phrase stays in someone's head, and there is no e-
mail headers telling where that floppy hidden between two halves of a
postcard came from. Think encryption with random data block output. (Think
software to allow me to read that floppy after the rotational indexing is
lost when I separate the metal hub and later put one back on).

The "collapse of governments" claim might get a few rebellious school girls
in cheap leather to follow you home, but it's not worrying the NSA or the
tax man. "You want to drive on this highway? Pay up or go back home." "You
want that CAT scan? We accept cash." "You need unemployment support? Well,
you never paid your insurance tax." Encryption isn't going to end taxes. It
will just change the way they are collected. It will tie a service to your
payment of a tax. "You want us to shoot down that missile headed your way?
Sorry, your community didn't pay for military protection and we don't have
any strategic targets there." "You want to live in this community? Sorry
you have to pay this tax for military protection or you aren't welcome
here." "You want to sell secrets to IRAQ? We've bugged your left ear, the
one you use for the phone. Sorry about the ear ache we had to cause to get
you into the local hospital."

I think the time is coming when we are going to discover what our species
is really all about, since encryption will set us free to be ourselves, as
individuals. I think we will be pleasantly surprised. I just hope we don't
hurt each other trying to resist change. As Bucky Fuller said, "Utopia or
Oblivion." He also warned that we "NOW" (1969) have the technology to
provide everyone on this planet with adequate food and shelter, but that if
we don't give it to them, they are going to walk up that crunchy imported
gravel driveway, past your BMW, and kill you.

Was Phil Zimmerman a "Cypherpunk who wrote PGP"? Or are you guys just strip
mining the CRYPTOGRAPHY movement and selling it back to us at twice the
price? "Anarchy for sale." - Dead Kennedys.

Cypherpunks.
Cypherpunks.
Fuck off!

Send me a computer virus and I'll send you a REAL virus ;-). Stop talking
about the obsolete internet. It's just a primitive non-multimedia medium
for discussion about real life, real privacy, and real people's needs. The
information highway isn't likely to involve Unix or RFC standards. "Can I
send you a gigabyte of my latest movie? Or you can ftp it from my laptop.
You do have 2 gigs of RAM don't you?" Don't follow internet-like standards
when coding an encryptor ["PGP versions 2.3 and later use a new format for
encoding the message digest into the MPI in the signature packet, a format
which is compatible with RFC1425 (formerly RFC1115)." - Phil Zimmerman]. Do
something timeless and historically significant. Write a real encryptor.
Then it doesn't matter if everyone isn't using it, 'cause you're just
sending "noise", like everyone else. Who cares about Clipper? Don't argue
politics. Write code. Easy to use code. Plug and play user interfaces for
the Mac and Windows. Or who else you gonna talk to? E-lovers? E-people?

I'm not a "Cypherpunk", I'm a scientist. An introvert who values his
privacy. I don't need PGP, except for fun, to sign things, and to reduce
the most blatant internet privacy violations. For now it's the internet
standard, but Clipper is good enough for me, personally. It will keep those
around me who I do not wish to share my personal life with from reading my
e-mail and files on my floppies. I don't mind the NSA reading my e-mail.
But I do worry for others, who are trying to change the world in more
political ways, and fear that the NSA will not be the only ones with access
to the keys. PGP activism is just my latest hobby. I just want more people
to talk to, using PGP. I don't want my picture in Wired. You're not PUNKS.
Your just entertainment, until you get off the internet and WRITE A REAL
ENCRYPTOR. The bad guys love PGP. They don't want it to loose its
underground appeal, lest it become less popular and they can no longer
identify encrypted messages. See the big picture and do something useful,
or your just a bunch of e-yuppies worshipping money and attention as the
center of meaning in your life. Fun toys and babes. Die e-yuppie scum.
UNSUBSCRIBE.

 -=Xenon=-

P.S. Thanks for not putting my "Here's How to MacPGP!" guide on any of your
ftp sites. It would have lost its edge, mixed in with all the e-bullshit
already there about "anarchy" on the internet (WWW). And I might not have
had to send it to people by e-mail, people who don't know what ftp MEANS,
because they don't have the time to figure out stupid command-line
operating systems, the historical equivalent of programming via hard-wiring
or punch cards.