From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 1996 14:21:04 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: HotWired -- "Third Choice" for Netizens may be Libertarian Party
Message-ID: <Pine.3.89.9607081915.A23370-0100000@well>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 8 Jul 1996 19:46:34 -0700 (PDT)
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: fight-censorship+@andrew.cmu.edu
Subject: HotWired -- "Third Choice" for Netizens may be Libertarian Party

HotWired: The Netizen
http://www.hotwired.com/netizen/

"Third Choice" -- Campaign Dispatch

by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com)
Washington, DC, 8 July 
   
   The nervous sweat of US voters forced to choose between
   character-impaired Clinton and vision-impaired Dole may distill into
   fuel for the Libertarian Party. At the party's ragtag convention last
   week, Harry Browne began to make a case that the Libertarian Party
   isn't just for cyberheads and conspiracy theorists.

[...]
   
   It was a refreshing departure from the highly scripted 1992 Democratic
   National Convention - more an exercise in infotainment than anything
   else - where party insiders worked quietly to block a loudmouth Jerry
   Brown from speaking unless he signed an agreement pledging fealty to
   Bill Clinton...
      
   Not so with the Libertarian convention, which netizens attended in
   force. Phil Zimmermann, author of Pretty Good Privacy, appeared at a
   privacy workshop on Saturday where delegates received PGP on floppies.

   On Thursday, Jim Ray, a cypherpunk and Libertarian delegate from Coral
   Gables, Florida, introduced a motion to strengthen the party's stance
   on encryption by condemning "government access to keys" - a mandatory
   backdoor for the Feds. "Or GAK, as we call it on Cypherpunks," Ray
   told the other delegates, who passed the revised crypto plank
   unanimously.

[...]

   The so-called Year of the Net marches on, but the Libertarian Party
   now stands as the only serious political party with a commitment to
   defending the rights of netizens.

###