What is a cypherpunk?

[Major Variola (ret)]

A cypherpunk is one who is amused at the phrase "illicit
Iraqi passports".  Given that the government of .iq has been
replaced by a conquerer's puppet goverment, who exactly has authority
to issue passports there?  And why does this belief about the
1-to-1-ness of passports to meat puppets or other identities fnord
persist?

A CP is not an anarchist; and anarchists are ill defined by current
authors, since the word merely means no head, rather than no rules,
as Herr May frequently reminded.
(In fact, the rules would de facto be set by the local gangster, rather
than
a DC based gang claiming to be the head.  A better form is libertarian
archy, but that is perhaps another thread.)

A CP, removing arguable claims about political idealogy,
is one who understands the potential effects of certain
techs on societies, for good or bad.  And is not, like
a good sci fi writer, afraid to consider the consequences.

And, ideally, a CP is one who can write code, and does so,
code that might be useful for free sentients, not even
necessarily free (in the beer sense) code.  (Albeit 'tis hard to
write useful code in the uninspectable sense of not-free,
and inspectability facilitates beer-free copying )
But this is an ideal, and perhaps three meanings of "free" in
one rant is too many for most readers.


At 12:04 PM 2/7/05 -0500, R.A. Hettinga wrote:
>While officials in Baghdad and Washington berate Iraq's neighbours for
>failing to block insurgency movements across their borders, one of the
most
>dangerous security lapses thrives in Baghdad's heart - a trade in
illicit
>Iraqi passports.