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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Kendall Davis <KENDALL@******.BITNET>
Subject: Re: Encryption
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 1993 17:34:00 EDT
Well,
what a mess. This whole thing started because of a message I should
probably have just ignored.

Someone posted asking my character about an item she had. She encrypted
the information that she had it only to certain members of her party. She
certainly didn't want to broadcast to everyone on the net what she had.

I pointed out to the person that the message was encrypted and he shouldn't
have been able to read it. His sole response, "Oops, sorry". No harm, no
foul.

Then Rob quickly suggested that any message could be decrypted at any time
by any one. "Grow up" he said.

That seemed to border on munchinkism to me. If anyone can Decrypt any message
at anytime, then encryption is pointless.

If we have to take "private" messages (which is what encryption creates) to
truly private means, behind the scenes and off TK, there will be critical gaps
in the story line. This would make the logs almost pointless.

If we have to take messages that we would otherwise encrypt behind the scenes,
so there would go the true story lines. ShadowTK would then be the
Mr. Johnson network. Make your contacts, and to be certain you are safe,
move the story by private e-mail from there.

Rob's arguement to me was that ShadowTk was public. Fine. In reality, we have
to have a means for characters originating from around the world
(in true location), to communicate character to character, privately, while
maintaining the storyline on TK for those interested. Encryption accomplishes
this.

Let's just respect encrypted messages. Occaisionally the encryption could
manage to be broken, but in the year 2054, the technology certainly exists
to create an encryption program that will be safe for several days. It
exists now. Let's also, as Jason pointed out, not abuse encryption by
overuse. It is, however, a necessary evil.
Perhaps if we just drop the subject and respect the majority of encrypted
messages, we can return to our runs.

The originator of the mess.

Kendall (FraterNay / Kendra)
Message no. 2
From: "JOHN SPAIN <BIOTECHNOLOGY YEAR 1-FOREVER" <93135653@****.DCU.IE>
Subject: Encryption
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 17:22:20 +0000
>>>>>[This is a public service announcement:

I'd like to remind some people about the basic flaw of exclusion-type
encryption. Sure, the person excluded can't see it, but there's nothing
stopping a friend o' his from forwarding him the message.

In the case of group exclusions, say 'NOT TO: Ares employees' you can count
on the encryption working against standard corp MPCP's, known Ares
operatives, and even yer own personal Ares file if you have one,
but there's no way in hell the program is gonna be able to recognize
somebody as an Ares employee if he doesn't want to be known as one.
You'd need a fraggin' AI to do the checking.

Ok, ok, before ya all flame me ta hell tellin' me ya already know that,
here's another little bit o' paranoia to keep ya awake at night.

The very best encryption algorithms available today can be broken in
a minimum of three days by the Megacorps big mainframes. Ok, so the
very best machinery is expensive and won't be used unless the Megs' are
very, very itchy to know what you're keepin' secret. But any normal,
not very high priority encrypted message left in Shadowland is bound
to be decyphered an' stored in a corp Databank within a month.

Sweet dreams, kiddies]<<<<<
-- Goku (12:23:15/04-19-56)

Further Reading

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Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.

Thwap!