Re: <nettime> the architecture of survival

[Drazen Pantic <drazen@location1.org>]

Dear Andreas,

I agree that the tone of the article has portraited very
drastically the situation in Serbia and the use of
encryption by B92. And I guess that was used for the sake of
the argument in the current discussion about encytion after
911 attack. You might or might not find it important, but
the pressure to crack on use and export of crypto tools is
pretty strong here in USA.

With all due respect for your knowledge of situation in
Serbia, Balkans and more, I must confirm that B92 has used
encryption way before '99 - precisely since mid '97 or so.
Together with XS4ALL, and with great help and guidance from
there, OpenNet and XS4ALL have established PGP based tunnel
Bgd-Ams, so all email to and from Serbia via B92 servers was
seamlessly encrypted. Some of that was presented on ANEM
conference, back in 98, [1].

Another important question is how much productive,
especuilally on the long run, that approach was. Namely
OpenNet subscribers have felt pretty secure and, having
luxury of seamless encytion, did not have to go through
process of downloading, installation and familiarization
with PGP clients. Hence, when Miloshevic took over B92
premises, that setup was obviously disrupted, so many people
had to go through instant individual getting-to-know with
crypto techniques. But, even so, within couple of weeks
crypto channels were established, and I recall exchanging
lots of messages of that kind with many people who stayed in
Belgrade.


Cheers
Drazen

[1] http://www2.opennet.org/mediaevents/konferencija/pantic-e.html

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