At 6:55 PM -0800 2/19/00, John Young wrote:
>This list is the first place I heard of Echelon, and a lot of other
>things, from crypto to TEMPEST and more. Maybe it's not at
>the moment at its peak level on politico-technology, but nuggets
>continue to appear, particularly those which provide a densepack
>of information dressed up with enlightening critique, context
>and history. Thanks for those, Tim, and to all who take the
>time to lay out what may be familiar to you but continually
>beneficial to others.
Sadly, most of the stuff in the past half dozen years is nothing new to
those on the list in the '92-'94 period. All of the Minaret, TEMPEST, etc.
sort of stuff was actually covered in a handout/glossary compiled by me,
with inputs from Eric Hughes, for the first Cypherpunks meeting in '92.
I'm not saying this to knock folks like John here, who has clearly done a
fantastic job with his Cryptome site (and sites that preceeded this exact
name). The point being most of what gets discussed these days is just a
rehash of old stuff. And that only a very few "recruits" have gone on to
further what we started with. You know the names, as they are the folks who
keep generating new stuff on ciphers, smart cards, attacks, etc.
>
>Tim, perhaps your novel evolved into Cyphernomicom, a jewel
>of narration, chockfull of scary, thrilling, enlightening techno-threads,
>perhaps the most richly-featured hypertext to appear.
>
>Is there to be a sequel? Okay, okay, fuck me.
Nope. Like many who birth a novel or a painting, I was glad to be done with
it. It consumed about a year out of my life, working on it nearly every day
and having it looming over me.
And I ended up being dissatisfied with the structure. It was neither the
prose narrrative it might have been, or the simple encyclopedia it should
have been. (A simple alphabetical organization of terms, ranging from
mundane crypto to abstracto technopolitical, would have been just as useful
an organization, and much more maintainable. New entries could have been
added by anyone, for example. I regret that I chose to write an
indiosyncratic realization of my thoughts instead of a simple, albeit
large, encyclopedia.)
It's also a waste of time to write FAQs, I've concluded. I suspected this
before, but now I know it for sure. Those who most need to read a FAQ are
usually the least likely to do so. Those who read widely don't _need_ a
FAQ. FAQs are thus mostly useful for providing etiquette tips to newbies,
telling them where to find archchives, pointing out books they should read,
etc. All third grade stuff.
Much of what was developed for my novel was about how data havens could
work, how untraceable contract assassinations would work, digital escrow,
time-released crypto, perpetual trusts, etc. A lot of this made it into the
posts I wrote for the Extropians list, circa '92-94, and for the
Cypherpunks list, circa the same period. Some of these ideas are described
in the Cyphernomicon, though usually only in sketchy detail.
>Bamford's supposed to have one coming, now how long has that
>been rumored? Jeffery Richelson's got a piece on Echelon due out
>shortly in Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, or is it out now?
The Bamford second edition is said to be much more detailed than the
pitiful second edition of Kahn's "The Codebreakers."
It's been reportedly coming out for several years now.
And Steven Levy's book on crypto is still not out. (I think I was
interviewed for it in '93 or so...I hope he plans to reinterview me before
using words that are 8 years out of date!)
A French paranoid would say that the NSA has bought U.S. publishers, and
probably Amazon.com as well.
--Tim May
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
