Josh Quittner's Newsday column on Cypherpunks

[gnu (John Gilmore)]

Date:      Wed, 02 Feb 1994 10:41:42 est
From: "josh quittner" <quit@newsday.com>
To: gnu@cygnus.com
Subject:   newsday column

Hiya John:
Here's the little column I did for my newspaper on the cypherpunks
meeting I sat in on last month. Thought you might be interested. I know
it's laymanlike, but if you want, you have my permission to distribute
it to your list. I told Eric I'd send him a copy, but I left his email
address at home, so if you'd be good enough, would you either pass this 
on to him or email me his address so I can? Thanks. Hope all is well with
you. Be glad you're not freezing your ass off back here.
	Regards,
	-jq


PUBLICATION DATE      Tuesday. February 1, 1994
EDITION               NASSAU AND SUFFOLK
SECTION               DISCOVERY
PAGE                  53
OTHER EDITIONS        59 C
HEADLINE              Life In Cyberspace
                      COMPUTERS IN THE ^90s
                      Coding Up a Bit of Privacy
BYLINE                Joshua Quittner
DATELINE              MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.
LENGTH                91   Lines

  MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.
       THIS MUST BE HOW the Founding Fathers looked when they hacked out
  the Constitution:
      A roomful of young men, mostly  -  frazzled hair, eager eyes, wild
  beards, arms flailing and fingers jabbing the air, reaching for big
  ideas. You can't help but feel it; urgency tempers their voices. The
  earnest men plan and argue in this corporate conference room as the last
  sun rays of a winter Saturday afternoon fade in through a skylight. 
      Time is running out for the Cypherpunks.
      There is much work to be done before the information highway
  arrives. The information highway   -   that 500-channel shopping mall /
  cineplex championed by cable and telephone companies   -   is a noxious
  concept to the people in this room. They are not technophobes or
  Luddites, these Cypherpunks. Instead, they are a collection of clever
  computer programers, engineers and wire heads from some of the nation's
  best-known Silicon Valley software houses and hardware shops.
      This is their central question: In a future world where all
  information is centralized on a network, where all information is
  tracked by the bit, where every purchase you make and every
  communication can be monitored by corporate America, how does privacy
  survive? If you go to a bookstore now and buy a book, you can pay in
  cash. No one knows your name or what you purchased. "What happens to
  cash transactions on the information highway?" they ask.
      The Cypherpunks believe that they can preserve your privacy through
  good cyphers, or codes. But they must hurry, must get their codes out
  and their networks up and running.
       "The whole information highway thing is now part of the public
  eye," explains Eric Hughes, a founder of the Cypherpunk movement. "If we
  don't change it now, it'll be impossible later."
     The Cypherpunks know what technology is capable of. We visit them
  today because they represent one edge of the national debate on the
  structure of the information highway. And as we all know, extreme
  positions help define the middle.
      Many of the Cypherpunks have been heavy Internet users for years and
  hope to preserve the communal spirit of that freewheeling world of
  interconnected computer networks. They dread the coming commercial
  network of televisions and computers, saying it will displace the
  Internet and destroy many of the freedoms they now enjoy.
      So the Cypherpunks, with the kind of zeal they professionally bring
  to marathon, 72-hour sessions hacking computer code, are plotting to
  keep free networks alive. That's "free" in the sense of unfettered,
  unmonitored, uncensored.
      One way they're going about it is by spreading easy-to-use, cheap
  cryptography. Cryptography is the science of keeping two-way
  communication private. Computers, it turns out, are revolutionary
  cryptographic tools, able to encode and decode files quickly. For the
  first time, virtually unbreakable codes are now possible, thanks to
  computers.
      The Cypherpunks post cryptographic software on the Internet where
  anyone can access it, and can encode their communications, including
  electronic mail, pictures and video. 
      But the U.S. government is concerned, as governments always are,
  about the spread of powerful cryptography (terrorists could use it,
  kidnapers could use it, drug dealers could use it, all of them on
  cellular phones that encode conversations). It currently is pushing its
  own commercial cryptographic standard, through a special chip known as
  the Clipper. The chip is reviled by Cypherpunks and other civil
  libertarians because it provides a back door that law-enforcement
  agencies could enter, with the proper warrants, for surveillance. 
      By getting good, unbreakable cryptography out there now, the
  Cypherpunks hope, whatever the government finally decides will be moot.
      Software has a wonderful property, the Cypherpunks are fond of
  saying: Once it's created, it can never be destroyed. It can be copied
  infinitely, from computer to computer, spreading like a secret. Come
  what may, unbreakable Cypherpunk code, and Cypherpunk networks, will be
  out there forever, they hope. But just to be safe, the Cypherpunks are
  toying with different network-related plans to create an economy of 
  "digicash"   -   network money that, like the dollars in your pocket,
  isn't tied to a user's credit cards or other personal identification.
  Digicash will help pay for Cypherpunk networks and will allow people to
  purchase goods without revealing their identity.
     "I'm starting a bank, and it's not going to be a U.S. bank," Hughes
  says. He's standing at the whiteboard now. A strawberry-blond ponytail
  dangles down his back and he grasps a magic marker in his hand. "We have
  several long-term strategies, one of which is the elimination of central
  banks." He tells the assembled crowd what they already know. Heads nod.
  Some people take notes.
      Hughes is a self-employed programer in Berkeley. His hand flies
  across the whiteboard, sketching out a schematic diagram, showing how
  his bank will operate. The bank will store depositers^ money (he's
  thinking a $200 minimum deposit) and disburse payments to anyone   - 
  all over the Internet. It will be based abroad, maybe in Mexico. A
  Cypherpunk network bank is one way to pay for a network of truly
  encrypted, private communications, you see.
      "Is this going to lead the way to portable laptop ATM machines?"
  someone asks in the back. People snicker. 
      "Have you thought about its name?" someone else asks.
      "First Bank of Cyberspace!" yells one person.
      "First Internet Bank!" yells another.
      "The Nth National Bank!"
      Laughter. Billy goat beards bob.
      There is much work to be done.

--end of story--
-- 
          josh quittner
             vox: 516-843-2806
                fax: 516-843-2873
                   quit@newsday.com