Pretty quiet. I'm going through back messages now and only saw I think three from July 1.
-Declan
On Wed, Jul 02, 2003 at 02:04:28AM -0700, Bill Stewart wrote:Is it really quiet in here, or does the fact that I've been playing with procmail this evening have something to do with it?
Thanks; Bill
But things have been quiet for months now, except for occasional bursts of Unix-related security cruft.
I think it's related to "statism overload." And boredom. Things are objectively more statist and surveillance-oriented than when the Phil Zimmermann case and Clipper phone "energized a generation." But the reaction today is ho-hum. No emergency meetings, no guerilla activities. Hell, it's been months since I've seen any mention of a Cypherpunks meeting in the Bay Area. (A recurring problem for years, actually, since we stopped having meetings in a regular place. One never knows whether the next meeting will be at some coffee shop in Oakland or, ugh, at the Police Training Camp in San Francisco. In any case, driving 50 miles to Silicon Valley was a regular thing for me, but driving 100 miles to SF or Oakland is usually not in the cards for me. I haven't heard about any meetings since several months ago, so maybe they're not even happening up in SF or Berkeley, anyway.)
But things are quite a bit worse than they were in 1992. Which, I suppose, is good for bringing on the collision of armies, or recruiting new warriors. But maybe not, given the apathy.
Every day brings new reports of surveillance plans, suspensions of the Constitution, more statism.
I think people are anesthetized, a la the boiling frog, to the developing statism.
(Side note, worthy of a longer article: It may be literally a generational thing, as libertarianism tended to be. The anti-state "activists" of the 70s and 80s were influenced by the antiwar movement of the 60s, but were still somewhat libertarian. Many had read Heinlein, Rand, Rothbard, Hayek. The early Cypherpunks folks were generally conversant with the ideas, and receptive. I conjecture that the "new crop" is more into body piercings, skin art, and anti-globalism (when it comes to corporations and trade, but not when it comes to world government). In other words, Cypherpunks is like several other Baby Boom "degenerating research program.")
I would predict that things are getting more statist and are coming to some kind of head. Except, why bother making any predictions? Robert Hettinga would make some snarky comment about my track record for predictions and Duncan Frissell would gush about how things are more free than ever, that the Perpetual Tourist need not worry about surveillance, tracking, new laws, and restrictions on movement.
Here's just part of just today's harvest. I won't even call it "Brinworld," as many here do, as this kind of government surveillance has nothing in common with Brin's (misguided) idea of symmetrical surveillance.
<http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=528&ncid=528&e=2&u=/ ap/20030702/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/pentagon_urban_cameras>
--begin excerpt--
U.S. Develops Urban Surveillance System
Wed Jul 2, 1:46 AM ET
By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Police can envision limited domestic uses for an urban surveillance system the Pentagon (news - web sites) is developing but doubt they could use the full system which is designed to track and analyze the movement of every vehicle in a city.
Dubbed "Combat Zones That See," the project is intended to help the U.S. military protect troops and fight in cities overseas.
Scientists and privacy experts say the unclassified technology also could easily be adapted to keep tabs on Americans.
The project's centerpiece would be groundbreaking computer software capable of automatically identifying vehicles by size, color, shape and license tag, or drivers and passengers by face.
The proposed software also would provide instant alerts after detecting a vehicle with a license plate on a watchlist, or search months of records to locate and compare vehicles spotted near terrorist attacks, according to interviews and contracting documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which develops technologies for fighting 21st century wars, is overseeing the project.
Scientists and privacy experts who have seen face-recognition technology used at a Super Bowl and monitoring cameras in London are concerned about the potential impact of the emerging DARPA technologies if they are applied to civilians by commercial or government agencies outside the Pentagon.
"Government would have a reasonably good idea of where everyone is most of the time," said John Pike, a Global Security.org defense analyst.
