The Enemies List

[chefren]

On 14 Sep 2001, at 15:18, Jim Choate wrote:

> On Fri, 14 Sep 2001, Nomen Nescio wrote:
> 
> > You and other critics have every right to speak your mind and make your
> > position known.  Indeed, the cypherpunks were founded on the principle
> > of advancing freedom of speech.  It is a sad and tragic irony that one
> > of the founders of that group has descended into a despicable allegiance
> > to violence.  Long-term subscribers have seen it happen gradually over the
> > years.
> 
> Descended hell, he's always been that way.


Well well well, long time ago that I was on the Cypherpunk 
list. Nothing changed there it seems!

Although there were and probably are quite some interesting 
writers on the list I think I won't subscribe again.

Problem is I'm against "absolute" anonymity, I think 
working on it is technically interesting but the result is 
nothing less than a-social and I'm not at all against 
democratic societies. It's easy to say so for me since I 
live in a pretty free country (The Netherlands) but as a 
whole when there is no war, we don't need anonymity as far 
as I see it. You can always find a journalist or someone 
else to tell your story to the world if you have serious 
problems. No information should be distributed without 
someone responsible for it!

Anonymity like we have on the net now makes me think of the 
middle ages, when the cities started to come up. When you 
weren't a citizen you might not enter with weapons those 
day's. "Leave them at the entrance." Often it was even 
necessary to leave the city before the night... After some 
time (centuries) they came up with the "horrible idea" to 
give people identities that could be verified. They later 
evolved to "passports". So people from one city could 
operate in other cities and even countries, as long as your 
country more or less guaranteed your identity. 

What we need as soon as possible is "Digital Identity" 
(DI), not from commercial companies like banks, yuck(!), no 
our governments should add a chip to our passports. Without 
that chip no serious communication.

Of course that wouldn't be such a very good idea for 
privacy, so DI without further provisions wouldn't be such 
a good idea. The solution is that your DI should entitle to 
as much virtual identities as you would like to have. 
Government (or a third party setup by the three main 
parties of the Trias Politica) should only reveal your 
real/absolute identity if a judge has judged so according 
to democratically agreed laws.

+++chefren

(Yes, that's my real forename exclusive enough I think, and 
if the absolute e-mail address works, who needs to know 
more?)