From: Liam David Gray <lg2g+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Date: Sat, 11 Sep 93 18:18:13 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Spooks reading the list
In-Reply-To: <9309112115.AA04714@soda.berkeley.edu>
Message-ID: <kgYbRma00iV3A6HGZT@andrew.cmu.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


[Here I quote nobody@soda who quotes remail@tamsun:]

> *Excuse me, but I'm getting tired of this silly paranoia.  NSA
> *is not Evil Incarnate Central, and we are not fighting a Valiant War 
>                                     ==
>  
> We? WE! Do you suppose that was a Freudian slip, or did he mean to 
> say it like that? Whoever he is, he works for the NSA. Did anyone else
> notice this at the time?

Nobody, when I read the original post I assumed the "we" you're talking
about was 'we, the Cypherpunks.'  I.e., if NSA were truly Evil Incarnate
Central, the Cypherpunks would be fighting "a Valiant War ["We Are Fated
to Lose"]".  For a moment there, nobody, you nearly had me believing
you.  But read the rest of the post, and the above 'slip' becomes much
less interesting:

[Me quoting nobody@soda quoting remail@tamsun, again:]

>*We Are Fated to Lose.  The NSA are a  bunch of Americans who went
>*to school & college with the rest of us, and share our communities
>*with us.  Most of them joined NSA to fight totalitarian Communism, and 
>*most of them are sympathetic with values most Americans share when they 
>*bother to think about them, like freedom, privacy, etc.  Sure, NSA has
>*been caught up in the Cold War habits of secrecy, bureaucracy, and
>*an ingrained habit to control information.  It's also almost surely
>*caught up in the same kind of bureaucratic incompetence we see
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^                               ^^^^^^^^^^^^
The NSA is caught up in bureaucracy, so the Cypherpunks need not lose.

>*in the rest of the U.S. Federal government (most of the DoD, the space 
>*programs, the BATF, the FBI, etc.)  Does a $40+ crypto-voice-chip with 
>*an obvious trap door look like Malicious Plot to Destroy All Strong
>*Crypto and Take Over The World, or does it look like an
>*a half-competent, half-hearted attempt to retain Cold War era 
    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Cypherpunks are not fated to lose, because the NSA's attempts are fated
to fail.

>*capabilities they had gotten used to?

[rest deleted]

If you give me some time, I can contact the author of the original post
-- remail@tamsun.tamu.edu -- and have him post a confirmation of my
interpretation of his original post.
/* for (i=0 ; i<2**64 ; i++) printf(":>"); */

Liam Gray - lg2g+@andrew.cmu.edu