NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/sci/crypt/6245

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-29 | 3.6 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Larry Loen)
Subject: re:  sci.crypt.research
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Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 17:37:48 GMT
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As a relative newcomer to Internet, I post opinions on this topic with
caution.

However, it seems the strong opinions of many that the group needs to
split.  I subscribed to this group for some time without much (political)
activity, but it seems to be growing.

Question:  Is this a current fad?  When the latest bills blow through
  the US Congress or die, will most of this stuff fade?

Question:  Are we big enough to split?  As far as I know, we never made
  the "top 25" newsgroups in any category.  At some point, I suppose this
  sort of thing is controlled by a vote, rather than any such theoretical
  considerations, but it does seem a semi-relevant question.

Question:  Is this officially in front of the proper voting bodies, or is
  it just being discussed here, with strong intent to bring it forward
  "officially", whatever that is?  Postings disagree on this.

For my own part, if we must split, I suggest that we go to

1) talk.crypt.politics or some such and
2) somehow make sci.crypt _imply_
      sci.crypt.research without saying so explicitly.

Once we have two groups, we can shoo the other folks away.

Rationale:  Cryptography suffers from enough restrictions and misinformation
among programmers (who are supposed to be conversant in Information Theory,
which is what crypto is part of), much less the general public.  So it's
important to have a place where people can come with questions with some odds
of going away without misusing crypto.  sci.crypt.research is too forbidding.
The last thing we need is to discourage the flow of knowledge to the many
whose contact with crypto is the day their manager assigns them to write a
password validator or to install some crypto product.

On the other hand, if we have a group that is functioning _like_
talk.crypt.politics, whatever its name, they may never get anywhere, either.
Presumably, those who can help will have gone over to sci.crypt.research.

For instance, I am participating in a modest thread or two in comp.lang.c++
where two different guys (in only one week!) asked "hey, send me a reusable
encryption algorithm" and were immediately "rewarded" with three or four
postings by folks who had obviously never cracked a book, reinventing
Vigenere and the like.  I imagine this comes up in comp.lang.whatever every
so often.

I believe if we can help such people, it is more important that
advancing the state of the art, per se.  Let's not throw the baby out with
the bathwater.  There's a lot of ignorant and therefore poor use of crypto
out there.  Shouldn't we stop it to the extent we can?

It might also makes sense to try a weekly posting along the lines of
"Welcome to sci.crypt" that discourages "legalistic" discussion.  Couldn't
that all be routed to alt.privacy or some other place if we worked on it
a while?  At the least, it could be tried in parallel with this discussion.
I've already contributed the "temporary" FAQ.  Can someone else do this one?

--
   Larry W. Loen        |  My Opinions are decidedly my own, so please
                        |  do not attribute them to my employer