monkey-wrenching efnext

[Adam Back]

So it appears these efnext people are letting the administrator
control freak method to "fix" problems.  (The tendency to impose more
authentication, more logging, more central control -- instead of
fixing broken protocols -- the easy way out because it's simpler to
implement, though politically and technically broken).

Clearly they are making a mistake.

What could be done to persuade them or educate them that endeavour is
bad for net privacy?  

Some possible technical / social engineering backlashes:

- someone will create some abuse that causes the central
  administrators and thought police to become legally liable.  Perhaps
  even designer abuse -- "abuse" anonymously created for the effect it
  will have on the operators.  (Where's Dimitri Vulis when we need
  him?)

- they are probably dumb and have done a bad job of making their
  changes -- their new centralised controls will get hacked, and their
  network will prove even more susceptible to catastrophic DoS than
  the original ircd.

- people aren't really trying hard to disrupt IRC -- there are
  doubtless many much more malicious and harder to stop ways to
  disrupt it.  People might demonstrate some of these attacks on their
  central failure points.

Adam