IP: New Statesman on ukcrypto, 26/4/99

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

>X-Sender: nbr@popin.newcastle.ac.uk
>Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 12:53:53 +0100
>To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
>From: "Caspar Bowden" <cb@fipr.org> (by way of Brian Randell)
>Subject: New Statesman on ukcrypto, 26/4/99
>
>Dave:
>
>Here's a message from the UK Crypto mailing list with the URL for, and a
>quote from, an interesting New Statesman article that mentions the mailing
>list and its impact.
>
>Cheers
>
>Brian
>
>=====.
>
>http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/199904260035.htm
>
>Editors wanted
>
>Internet by Andrew Brown
>
>....(snip)
>
>Yet there is at least one example of a successful political campaign being
>organised on a mailing list; and this is the struggle to keep strong
>cryptography legal and widely available in this country. The web has played
>a part. The Foundation for Information Policy Research maintains a website
>at www.fipr.org which acts as a clearing house for all sorts of documents,
>including the texts of all the comments and objections submitted to the
>latest proposals for legislation. But most of the thought and co-ordination
>has been done on ukcrypto, a mailing list, the lowest form of technological
>life. There, for the past two years, the civil servants responsible for
>policy have actually been available, more or less, to the people who
>disagree with them. They have had to justify their actions not to the
>public, but to a small group of geographically dispersed experts, who may
>consult among each other between rounds. It's a kind of updated version of
>Lions v Christians; as in the original game, the audience is on the side of
>the lions, but I think the modern version is rather better for society. It's
>a way that cyberspace makes it easy to be a constructive asshole. Someone
>should enter it for the New Statesman's Internet contest, which the curious
>and determined will find on our website.
>
>
>
>