On 14 Sep 2001, at 15:18, Jim Choate wrote:
> On Fri, 14 Sep 2001, Nomen Nescio wrote:
>
> > You and other critics have every right to speak your mind and make your
> > position known. Indeed, the cypherpunks were founded on the principle
> > of advancing freedom of speech. It is a sad and tragic irony that one
> > of the founders of that group has descended into a despicable allegiance
> > to violence. Long-term subscribers have seen it happen gradually over the
> > years.
>
> Descended hell, he's always been that way.
Well well well, long time ago that I was on the Cypherpunk
list. Nothing changed there it seems!
Although there were and probably are quite some interesting
writers on the list I think I won't subscribe again.
Problem is I'm against "absolute" anonymity, I think
working on it is technically interesting but the result is
nothing less than a-social and I'm not at all against
democratic societies. It's easy to say so for me since I
live in a pretty free country (The Netherlands) but as a
whole when there is no war, we don't need anonymity as far
as I see it. You can always find a journalist or someone
else to tell your story to the world if you have serious
problems. No information should be distributed without
someone responsible for it!
Anonymity like we have on the net now makes me think of the
middle ages, when the cities started to come up. When you
weren't a citizen you might not enter with weapons those
day's. "Leave them at the entrance." Often it was even
necessary to leave the city before the night... After some
time (centuries) they came up with the "horrible idea" to
give people identities that could be verified. They later
evolved to "passports". So people from one city could
operate in other cities and even countries, as long as your
country more or less guaranteed your identity.
What we need as soon as possible is "Digital Identity"
(DI), not from commercial companies like banks, yuck(!), no
our governments should add a chip to our passports. Without
that chip no serious communication.
Of course that wouldn't be such a very good idea for
privacy, so DI without further provisions wouldn't be such
a good idea. The solution is that your DI should entitle to
as much virtual identities as you would like to have.
Government (or a third party setup by the three main
parties of the Trias Politica) should only reveal your
real/absolute identity if a judge has judged so according
to democratically agreed laws.
+++chefren
(Yes, that's my real forename exclusive enough I think, and
if the absolute e-mail address works, who needs to know
more?)