Cypherpunks, Politics, and Deployment

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

Cypherpunks, Politics, and Deployment


I'll begin by addressing Hal's points about my latest comments on
steganography, move on to some comments about the niche that
Cypherpunks occupy contrasted with those occupied by such political
action groups as the EFF and CPSR, and close by mentioning some
exciting possible developments in using digital money and crypto
methods for developing actual, legal banks and for moving data packets
around in a new kind of network (called "Digital Silk Road" by its
inventors).

This to show my version of Eric's "Cypherpunks write code" (even if
some of us mostly just write words!).


Hal Finney writes:

> I agree with Tim's suggestion that it would be good if steganography
> and cryptography tools were widely available, especially in light of
> the government's obvious hostility towards cryptography.
> 
> But I can't agree that these tools will be sufficient to bring about
> Tim's concept of "crypto anarchy", of "libertaria in cyberspace".  If
> we really want to achieve these goals I think it will be necessary to
> take political action.  Technology alone will not be enough.

Oh, I agree with you! I've never believed it will be easy, or will
happen naturally, or will even happen as I, and others, think it may.
The real future will have a lot of surprises in store for us. But we
can speculate, help to flesh out visions, and look at possibilities.
Orwell did this with "1984," Vinge did it with "True Names," and
Stephenson did it recently with "Snow Crash," to name just a few of
the "futurology" novels that have influenced some of us a lot.

> After all, even today techniques exist which would in principle allow
> a digital cash system to develop.  Yet no such system exists.  There
> needs to be an infrastructure, a network of bankers, sellers, users, and
> other participants.  All this will take time to develop even in the best
> of cases.

Agreed, and how it develops may surprise us. Maybe movie rentals will
be the first use, because of the politically correct issue of rental
privacy. Maybe toll roads in Europe will use digital money, as Chaum
has been negotiating for.

Implementing digital money deep inside the world of software and data
may be even more promising. Smart objects, agoric payment for storage,
for security, and for transmission, may be some early areas of
application, as the last section of this posting will report. And this
area will not require much political action at all...in fact, it's
probably best that we simply avoid telling the bureaucrats what's
going on at all. Present them with a fait accompli, as we (the
"technological we") did with personal computers, Xerox machines, VCRs,
and even the Internet itself.

> But if the government is actively fighting such technology, I don't
> see how Tim's proposed subterfuges with DAT's and CD's are going to be
> enough to overcome this additional barrier.  Without the ability to

The steganography stuff is truly minor compared to other stuff. Please
don't let my one big post on this ("Making the World Safe..."), or the
quotes by Kelly about me holding up a DAT tape, lead you to believe I
think this is central. For the articles in "WER" and the "Village
Voice" it just made for a good, easily understandable image of the
point that bits are essentially uncontrollable, that if the Soviets
couldn't stop samizdats, then the governments of the West are surely
not going to be able to halt bits at the border, or control what bits
are on the screens of millions of computers.

> My main point is that we cannot rely on the technology to save us.  A
> concerted government effort could, in my opinion, stifle the growth of
> individual liberties that cryptography may offer.  Clipper is just one
> battle in this longer war.  We can't afford to fall victim to a smug
> confidence that victory will inevitably be ours.  If we get to the point
> that steganography is the only way to communicate privately, we will have
> lost.

Well said, Hal. Certainly political activism is important. But so is
demonstration of actual technological paths. The political side has
been fairly well-covered, with EFF, CPSR, the ACLU, and other groups
fighing various battles (and missing others, or even taking the
"wrong" side on some issues...but such is life). 

The niche I think our group fills (and many members of EFF, CPSR, the
ACLU, and such, are in our group, too) is that of being a group that
is actually playing around with these various technologies. There are
groups of amateur cryptanalysts, of which we do very little or none,
and there are groups of ham radio enthusiasts, and so on. These groups
are similar to us in some respects, except that none of them are
investigating the same set of things we are. Who else is attempting to
actually _implement_ the ideas we are, at least as an entire set? (I'm
not suggesting we Cypherpunks take the credit for PGP, which was
already out (in Version 2.0, no less) just as our first meeting was
happening, nor can we claim to have invented anonymous remailers, as
Julf, Kleinpaste, and others were already doing this--and Chaum wrote
his "mix" paper in 1981. But we were and are "involved" in various
ways, as Hal himself was/is so prominently.)

No other group, so far as I know, has the same self-chosen charter we
have, to build and deploy systems involving "modern" cryptology in all
its many forms and to develop workable approaches to using these
technologies--public key crypto, digital money, dining cryptographers
nets, anonymous remailers, reputation markets, digital escrow
services, data havens, etc.--in new ways.

My point is that Cypherpunks fill an important ecological niche, that
the lawyers and political activists cannot completely fill themselves.
Nor do their interests lie in this area.

We complement each other.

And let me give fair warning: I don't think digital money and "crypto
anarchy" will ever happen in this country via the political process.
Rather, it'll happen through surprising, sudden shifts in the way
people do business, such as the way the Internet developed without
real legislative sanction (I'll grant it was never completely ignored,
and was subject to some kinds of laws. But mostly it just grew. This
is certainly not to say digital money will grow in an analogous way.
But anonymous reputation markets might, for example. Or offshore data
havens. Unless and until international phone lines are cut, it's hard
to imagine any law stopping such things. An outright ban on
non-Clipjacked encryption would of course be a major obstacle. Hence
the need to fight that with every weapon at our disposal.)

In any case, I personally am lousy as a political organizer and have
no interest in this. Personally speaking, to repeat. For those who do
have the skills, great!

Let me also remind readers that one mostly "political" achievement was
the creation of the alt.whistleblowers group. Though time will tell
whether this really changes things or not, it has the potential to.
This is just one example.

Let me close by citing some interesting developments which have not
gotten much discussion here on the main list. While the
"CryptoStacker" debate was raging a while back on the List, other
developments were continuing.

At the last Cypherpunks meeting, there was an excellent discussion of
how to to use existing laws to set up a form of bank that would do
business with digital money and that could use various crypto
techniques to enhance its business. (I expect this is a cryptic enough
summary!) I won't comment further, as the originator and developers
can comment on what they feel can be said on a public list. (They
spoke at the meeting without getting Nondisclosure Agreements, and the
Cypherpunks meetings are explicitly public, but it's still best if I
let the developers themselves do the talking.)

At the same meeting, Dean Tribble and Norm Hardy described their work
on "Digital Silk Road," a system for paying for packet transmissions
using digital money. (Their documents are available in the ftp site
netcom/pub/joule in PostScript, RTF, and text formats.) 

This proposed system uses digital money and yet would require almost
no legislative approval (I can't see how _any_ legal approval would be
needed initially, though when real transactions get big enough, the
Tax Man and his FTC/FCC brothers may stick their noses in). This
system could revolutionize the way packets of data are moved around
and could be the fait accompli I cited earlier.  If this succeeds
(long odds of course against any specific idea hitting big), then this
could introduce digital money and "Cypherpunks-style" ideas
ubiquitously and uncontrollably.

These developments could shape the future of cyberspace significantly.

Cypherpunks, we are making progress slowly but surely.


-Tim May

-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.