3 ms·

tl;dr: the article describes the origin of one of the 'masterminds' of the truecrypt collective (the group that programmed truecrypt). It describes how his upbr

tl;dr: the article describes the origin of one of the 'masterminds' of the truecrypt collective (the group that programmed truecrypt). It describes how his upbringing led to his viewpoints on privacy, hints at a conspiracy to eliminate public cryptography and talks about something called a 'cryptoparty', which I'm still scratching my head about. The article also hints he may have been involved in the illegal drug and arms business. Entertaining but not meaty with the evidence.

Kristine1975 11y ago
>cryptoparty Possibly this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptoparty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptoparty
EliRivers 11y ago
Back in my youth, I recall a "crytoparty" being a meatspace event in which people handed out and signed each others keys in order to create a web of verified trust.
- __jal 11y ago
  Yes. It was a thing people did for a while to attempt to bootstrap PGP/GPG's web of trust, as you say, but also as a PR sort of thing. Crypto was even more black-arts then than now, and with some of the demonization due to the war with the Clinton administration over ITAR, you heard some of the same stuff you hear now about having something to hide, enabling terrorism, etc. (At the time, the "Four Horsemen of the Infopocalypse" - drug dealers, pornographers, terrorists and kidnappers - were the boogie men; it seems kidnapping is less scary these days, so that one gets left out.) Showing how it worked was good PR, as far as it went; I saw a lot of people get that little kid with a decoder ring look. It was mostly a cypherpunks thing, but I understand others sympathetic to the idea picked it up. There were quite a few in the Bay Area, ca. 1993-97-ish. Perhaps later. I recall one entertaining party where proof of identity via government issued paper was forbidden.

3 ms·

tl;dr: the article describes the origin of one of the 'masterminds' of the truecrypt collective (the group that programmed truecrypt). It describes how his upbr

by Negative1 11y ago

Kristine1975 11y ago
>cryptoparty Possibly this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptoparty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptoparty
EliRivers 11y ago
Back in my youth, I recall a "crytoparty" being a meatspace event in which people handed out and signed each others keys in order to create a web of verified trust.
- __jal 11y ago
  Yes. It was a thing people did for a while to attempt to bootstrap PGP/GPG's web of trust, as you say, but also as a PR sort of thing. Crypto was even more black-arts then than now, and with some of the demonization due to the war with the Clinton administration over ITAR, you heard some of the same stuff you hear now about having something to hide, enabling terrorism, etc. (At the time, the "Four Horsemen of the Infopocalypse" - drug dealers, pornographers, terrorists and kidnappers - were the boogie men; it seems kidnapping is less scary these days, so that one gets left out.) Showing how it worked was good PR, as far as it went; I saw a lot of people get that little kid with a decoder ring look. It was mostly a cypherpunks thing, but I understand others sympathetic to the idea picked it up. There were quite a few in the Bay Area, ca. 1993-97-ish. Perhaps later. I recall one entertaining party where proof of identity via government issued paper was forbidden.