All quiet on the western front

[A.Melon]

Hi, Tim,

I'm glad that you have a bout of lucidity.

The government essentially won the crypto battle, marginalizing crypto
proponents, quietly getting media and corporations under control when
crypto is concerned, and generally rising the stakes. Those of you who
have access to corporate product development documents that relate to
communications know what I am talking about. CALEA etcl. It's there,
it's real and I think that about 5-10% of development resources are
taken by it.

Most cypherpunks were relatively highly paid engineers with
comfortable lives and some time on their hands, so while crypto was
fashionable it was cool to hang out at meetings and have pipe dreams
about taking on the state. Even then, scum like del Torto started to
bank ahead and sell to the "freedom fighters" and "good cops".

But then it got much worse. After the WTC theater, being present at
essentially anti-state meetings was not considered totally benign. And
also the salaries were gone, so this beer and TV Saturday alternative
suddenly stopped being alternative at all.

So we're back to the fact that highly paid engineers in crypto field
are really not automatically revolutionaries. On the contrary.

There are very few in the general population that are cut to be true
dissenters and act upon it. Now this age brings in the additional
requirement: they have to also be decent engineers. As a result, there
are very few left.