From: Steve Thompson <stevet@smeg.net4.io.org>
Date: Sun, 16 Jul 95 16:34:36 PDT
To: Bolivar Shagnasty <tj@compassnet.com>
Subject: Re: Crisis Overload (re Electronic Racketeering)
In-Reply-To: <Chameleon.4.01.2.950715030350.tj@tjunker.compassnet.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.950716174244.1168B-100000@smeg.net4.io.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Wish I could be more optimistic....

On Sat, 15 Jul 1995, Bolivar Shagnasty wrote:
> Perry Metzger wrote:
> 
> >"Robert A. Hayden" writes:
> >> We've seen the enemy, that the are the 535 senators and representatives 
> >> in D.C., and the staff in the White House.  It's time to shore up our 
> >> allies and enter the battle witht he best weapons we have; information 
> >> and popular use.

[snippage]

> Would it be more productive to hire the white shoes or start another few ISPs 
> and shepherd the new users to be privacy-aware letter writers and faxers?  
> Educate your ISPs.  Any ISP that isn't political in this age is brain 
> dead and dead weight.  Any ISP that sees its political interests as somehow 
> different than those of its users (recent lobbying to shift burdens away 
> from national services and onto users, and recent AOL admissions of 
> participation in what sounded like entrapping users) is worse than brain dead 
> -- it's part of the problem.

Speaking for an ISP startup (unoficially :), we're planning to get a 
small startup going within the next few weeks.  Being the technical 
brains behind the company (at least pertaining to the Internet), and 
having a strong idealistic streak, I assure you that I, for one, will be 
exerting as much effort as I can to promote cryptographic awareness for 
the users that subscribe.

Besides running the MixMaster software, I am going to devote a local 
newsgroup to the topic and hold an ongoing tutorial/Q&A session on the 
uses of crypto software.  I'll probably be posting some messages from 
this forum there as appropriate.

I'd like to do something neat like offer mail-drop type accounts -- 
accessable via telnet/POP/IMAP -- for e$, perhaps.

Being in Canada, I think I may have a little more time to get this sort 
of thing entrenched (on my system at least) than you do in the states, 
though I suspect that Uncle Sam may not even notice the border if they 
decide to get heavy-handed.  Perhaps I'm dreaming.

I am depressed at the direction the world is heading.  The issue to me 
seems to be how bad the totalitarianism will get since I think it's 
already here.  I'd really like to be able to move to another country... 
It might buy me ten to twenty years of breathing room before the United 
States encompasses the world.

If anyone gets ahold of any tickets on a rocket off this planet, would 
they please give me a call?
 
> Bolivar

Regards,

Steve Thompson, Internet Consultant at large -- stevet@smeg.net4.io.org
=======================================================================
To the sane mind, even aggression against people is infinitely better
than aggression against infinity. And it is the chief defect of sane
society that it is boring. It is so boring that even sane people
notice it. And so, from time to time, there is a war. This is intended
to divert people's minds before they become so bored that they take to
some impersonal kind of aggressive activity -- such as research, or
asceticism, or inspiration, or something discreditable of that kind.