| From: | Kendall Davis <KENDALL@******.BITNET> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Encryption |
| Date: | Fri, 13 Aug 1993 17:34:00 EDT |
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)
