The problem of playing politics with our constitutional rights

[Douglas L. Peterson]

On Fri, 12 Sep 1997 10:07:45 -0700, you wrote:

>At 9:13 AM -0700 9/12/97, Glenn Hauman wrote:
>>At 1:42 AM -0400 9/12/97, Tim May wrote:
>>>At 10:05 PM -0700 9/11/97, James S. Tyre wrote:
>>>
>>>>So, the last rhetorical question -- how do you convince someone who's
>>>>never used a browser (the vast majority of the voting populace, I'd
>>>>think) why crypto is important?
>>>
>>>This is back to where we were four and a half years ago, when Clipper was
>>>dropped on us. "How do we educate the users?"
>>>
>>>Trust me, it's a hopeless task. We don't have the advertising budgets, the
>>>staff for education, etc.
>>>
>>>And it ain't our responsibility to "save" the sheeple.
>>
>>True, but if it's war, we gotta get more troops. I don't want to save them,
>>I want more troops on my side.
>>
>>Education is good. Exploiting FUD is probably better. (DoJ's learned
>>something from dealing with Microsoft.) Luckily, it ain't that hard to whip
>>up Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt against the US Government.
>
>Fair enough. If you can launch an education program, well and good.
>
>I'm just pointing out that we saw this situation several years ago with
>Clipper. The list was, predictably, sidetracked with literally thousands of
>suggestions about how best to recruit more public supporters. T-shirts,
>gimmicks, and suggestions for songs about crypto, for getting t.v.
>producers to put crypto, pro-privacy themes in their t.v. shows, and so on.
>All pretty hopeless, wouldn't you say?
>
>As Lucky Green just said, "Cypherpunks write code."
>
>(This can be either direct code, or memetic code, or things related to
>getting actual technological changes distributed. What Cypherpunks _don't_
>do is try to play the Beltway game that Jerry Berman and his ilk play  (so
>poorly, for our issues), or to try to play the Hollywood and Madison Avenue
>games of swaying popular opinion.)
>
>--Tim May
>

Ok, we write code.  But as James S. Tyre pointed out, if the code is
too difficult to use it will not be.  And as Declan pointed out
many/most people will not use the crypto if they must think about it.

Writing the code is no longer enough.  The code must be usable by the
sheeple to work.  How do we do that?

-Doug
-------------------
Douglas L. Peterson
mailto:fnorky at geocities.com
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/1271/