Documents and code related to the functioning of the Mac diskette containing William Gibson’s poem in Agrippa. The diskette contained a custom-built program that rendered the poem as black text on white background scrolling up the screen at an unstoppable pace, and also a custom-built encryption program that then made the poem “disappear” after it had been seen once. In these documents, the programmer’s name and signature have been blacked out due to his wish (according to Agrippa’s publisher) to remain anonymous.

Item #D45. Letter from the John Perry Barlow to Kevin Begos, Jr., publisher of Agrippa.

Facsimile Image
Transcription

After meeting Kevin Begos at an event in New York City and hearing about Agrippa, Barlow—who had co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1990—enlisted John Gilmore (of Sun Microsystems, Inc.) to consult by phone with the programmer of Agrippa’s encryption code; he also arranged for Begos to attend the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility’s 2nd annual conference on Cryptography and Privacy, held in Washington, D.C., on 1 June 1992 (see Item #D24). Barlow and the EFF were concerned about efforts in Congress at the time to legislate encryption, and in this letter offers to be the lightning rod for “any legal fire generated” by Agrippa’s code. (See also the 7 May 1992 letter from Agrippa’s programmer referring to Barlow’s concerns about the “fuss being made over the encryption.”) The name of the programmer, with whom Barlow mentions having a “long chat,” is here blacked out because of his wish to be anonymous. (Source for information in this note: personal communication from Kevin Begos to The Agrippa Files editors, 8 Dec. 2005.)