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Cypherpunks--Where Do We Go From Here?
This long posting summarizes the recent meeting and includes my own
presentation to the meeting.
Our physical meeting on Saturday in Mountain View, CA was very successful,
with 35 people in attendance, most of them in the same room at the same
time for the whole 6 hours (this is not always the case!). The best
attendance we've ever had, or at least equalling the crowd we had for the
special emergency meeting following the Clipper announcement. I think we
all knew the importance of the one-year anniversary and the need to think
carefully about our future direction (modulo the fact, pun intended, that
we are an organizational anarchy, with little structure, diverse
viewpoints, and no compelling reason to get more organized).
Eric Hughes began the meeting shortly after noon. Speakers included myself,
Sandy Sandfort, Nick Szabo, Dean Tribble, Whit Diffie, Russell Brand, John
Gilmore, and others (I apologize to anyone I left out, as I was taking
minutes of the meeting and so am relying just on my recollection).
Rather than attempt to recap all that was said--and a lot gets said in six
hours!--it's best that folks give their own summaries of what they said, or
what others said, whatever. And they can post their handouts if they have
them available in the right format...Sandy has already done this, for
example.
Just for quick orientation, here were some of the main themes:
* GOALS. Where we have been, where we are, and where we are going. Has
progress stalled, after the early results with Phil Zimmermann's PGP and
with our Cypherpunks remailers? (We concluded we are mostly in a useful
consolidation phase, digesting the early gains as we contemplate future
directions in better remailers, digital postage and money, steganography,
etc.)
* POLITICS. We touched on the political aspects, especially since the
"privacy, not anarchy" thread had just the List the few days before the
meeting. The consensus was s friendly realization that we would not be
resolving anything politically, that the socialists and Hayekians may
interpret the world differently, but still agree on the need for strong
cryptography. (Folks should appreciate that the physical meetings are very
friendly affairs, generally much less contentious than the List can be at
times...I wonder what this says about our ideas for anonymous networks?
Just something to think about.)
* "TAZ." Eric Hughes read a long selection from Hakim Bey's ("not his real
name") "TAZ," published in 1990, and excerpted in "Mondo 2000" a while
back. "TAZ" was published/helped by Dave Mandl, one of our New York City
list members ("New York City?...get a rope!"). TAZ stands for "temporary
autonomous zones," a kind of crypto anarchy, albeit with more of
postmodernist, literary slant than what we have been pitching. (Our
developments were independent, as I had seen only the Mondo excerpt, and
that only a couple of years ago, while my "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto" was
distributed in 1988.)
* BANKS. Digital banks, offshore banking, and possible projects that are
starting up. Sandy Sandfort presented material on this. There is real
interest in this. We may have "Caymans Cypherpunks" or "Bahamas
Cypherpunks" meetings before long.
* SPECULATIVE PROJECTS. Nick Szabo presented a list of possible projects,
which he recently posted to the list. Things like "the Internet Casino"
(betting markets), data havens, and so on.
* PRIVACY. Judi Clark, active in the Computers, Freedom and Privacy
Conference and other Bay Area computer privacy groups, asked us for inputs
to some lectures being arranged. She asked what a "secure network" should
be, in terms of privacy. Ideas would fill a post by themselves, but were,
as I remember them: voluntary disclosure of data (you tell only what you
want made available), self-enforcement as much as possible, limited root
access to systems, encryption of links whenever possible, etc. (I'm doing a
poor job of summarizing this brainstorming session, though.)
* PATENTS. Russell Brand, a computer scientist now attending law school,
gave a 90-minute lecture on intellectual property law, with special
attention to the cloud of RSA patents (set to expire 1998-2002).
* LAWSUITS. John Gilmore spoke briefly about his FOIA lawsuits against the
NSA and NIST (especially over the failure to produce Clipper decision
documents in a timely fashion, as spelled out in the FOIA procedures) and
advised us that some important hearings are coming up in San Francisco in
the next month or so. He'll tell the List when the exact dates are.
* NEW LANGUAGES. Dean Tribble updated us on "Joule," the secure
language/operating system he and others are working on. (One of his
associates, Norm Hardy, once worked for IBM on the "Harvest" computer
installed at NSA in the early 60s, and detailed in Bamford's "The Puzzle
Palace." Norm will give a presentation on Harvest at the next Cypherpunks
meeting.)
* MISC. Mark Miller strongly praised the "Metro" cover story on "Code
Warriors" (the Julian Dibbell piece), noting that two major stories on
Cypherunks ("Wired" cover as well) had used the American flag as a motif
and had implied that strong crypto and privacy are fundamental American
values and that we are cypherpatriots.
Several newcomers (Sameer Parekh, Harry Bartholomew, Doug Merritt, others I
apologize to for not mentioning). There was a general feeling that the
importance of crypto is becoming more and more apparent every day.
We've come a long way this past year.
After the meeting, we adjourned to the Applewood Inn in Menlo Park for
pizza, a break from the usual Chinese or Thai food. After this, several
Cypherpunks were seen across the street in the huge Kepler's Books, some
even buying the latest issue of "Wired" despite the fact that cryptography
inexplicably went from the being #1 on the "Hot" list to not even being
listed in this issue! (I guess crypto is being retired from contention, out
of fairness to things like virtual reality and body piercings!)
........
Included below is the presentation I gave at the meeting. I also presented
a detailed PERT chart graph of important milestones on the way to long
range goals. I regret that this ASCII format is too limited to contain it,
to paraphrase a French mathematician in the news lately. (Don't ask for
PostScript versions...the effort of getting everything right in
transmission is unwarranted by the chart.)
I apologize for the occassional word wrap seen here, as I used an outliner
to generate the material and the line lengths sometimes are too long.
Cypherpunks--Where Do We Go From
Here?
I. Difficult to Set Directions
A. an anarchy...no centralized control
B. everyone has some axe to grind, some
temporary set of priorities
C. little economic motivation (and most
have other jobs)
II. Past, Present, Future
A. Where We've Been
1. successful mailing list and monthly
meetings
2. spread of crypto: Cypherpunks have
helped (PGP)...publicity, an alternative
forum to sci.crypt
3. remailers, encrypted remailers
4. ideas for perl scripts, mail handlers
5. general discussion, with folks of
several political persuasions
6. concepts: pools, ILF, BlackNet
B. Where We Are Now
1. Stalled?
a) crypto protocols are hard to build,
analyze, deploy
b) little incentive for people to put
incredible efforts in (unless they're
researchers in the field)....look at
effort just for PGP
c) Has the "low-hanging fruit" already
been picked?
2. Need to Decide on Nature of
Cypherpunks
C. Where We Could Go in the Future
1. Privacy Emphasis
2. Tools and Techniques Emphasis
3. Education and Lobbying Emphasis
4. Possible Directions
a) Crypto Tools...make them ubiquitous
"enough" so that the genie can't be
put back in the bottle
(1) can worry about the politics later
(socialists vs. anarchocapitalists,
etc.)
(2) develop and deploy a variety
of tools
(3) attempt to implement as many
"research" tools as possible
(4) Commercial Opportunities!
b) Education
(1) educating the masses about crypto,
public forums
(2) this was picked by the
Cambridge/MIT group as their special
interest
c) Politics and Lobbying
(1) talking to Congressional aides and
committee staffers, attending
hearings, submitting briefs on
proposed legislation
(2) coordinating with EFF, CPSR, ACLU,
etc.
(3) this was picked by the Washington
group as their special interest, which
is compellingly appropriate (Calif.
group is simply too far away)
d) Legal Challenges
(1) lawsuits against Skipjack, FOIA
requests, etc.
III. The Heart and Soul of Cypherpunks?
A. Competing Goals:
1. Personal Privacy
a) PGP, integration with mailers
b) education
2. Reducing the Power of Institutions
a) whistleblowers group
b) Chaum-style credentials (vs. national
ID cards, etc.)
3. Crypto Anarchy
B. Common Purposes (beyond ideology)
1. Spreading strong crypto tools and
knowledge
a) PGP
2. Fighting government restrictions and
regulations
a) Clipper/Skipjack fight was a unifying
experience
3. Exploring new directions in cryptology
a) digital mixes, digital cash, voting
b) no other groups are trying all that
we're trying
IV. Thesis: Strong crypto is a good thing
A. Tool against governments of all
flavors, left and right
B. Religious freedom
C. Free speech
D. Personal choice
V. Thesis: Crypto can become
unstoppable if critical mass is reached
A. analogy: the Net...too scattered, too
many countries, too many degrees of
freedom
B. so scattered that attempts to outlaw
strong crypto will be futile...no
bottlenecks, no "mountain passes" (in
a race to the pass, beyond which the
expansion cannot be halted except by
extremely repressive means)
VI. The Path to Crypto Anarchy-A
Personal View
A. Uses:
1. remailers, anonymity
2. digital cash, for privacy and for tax
evasion
3. data havens, bootleg medical
treatments, information markets
4. bookies, betting, numbers games,
smuggling, tax evasion
5. religious networks (digital
confessionals)
6. crimes, digital hits
B. Increasing Personal Privacy (under
attack, of course)
C. Increasing Connectivity--networks,
links, speeds
D. Privacy + Connectivity = Beyond
Control of Governments or Institutions
= Crypto Anarchy
PERT chart was included at this point.
--
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
[email protected] | 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: by arrangement
Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.