Josh Quittner`s Newsday c

[Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>]

Welcome to new lurkers (if any) from our recent NYT and Newsday publicity.

To give you something a little more interesting than "Is Usenet in the 
Public Domain?" to read, here is my response to Joshua Quittner's column 
in Newsday.

>Tuesday, 01 February 1994
>
>CODING UP A BIT OF PRIVACY
>
>Time is running out for the Cypherpunks.

Actually we have all the time in the world.  One cannot build a New 
Information Infrastructure without including the tools that anyone can 
use to communicate privately.

>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?  

More of a problem in the past than in the future.  When P.J. O'Rourke had 
lived in a small New Hampshire town for a year or so and went to the 
store to shop for some clothes the clerk remarked, "That's not the brand 
of underwear you usually buy."  One's life was more of an open book in 
the village and the tribe than it will be in the electronic village.  
Particularly since you can build private networks/"places" that exclude 
anyone you want.

>"The whole information highway thing is now part of the public eye," 
>explain Eric Hughes, a founder of the Cypherpunk movement.  "If we don't 
>change it now, it'll be impossible later."

Misquote?  It's usually better to do the job early than late but the 
nature of network communications is such that it's hard to control at any 
time.

>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.

Surely not the anarcho capitalists who probably represent a majority of 
active cypherpunks.

>For the first time, virtually unbreakable codes are now possible, thanks 
to 
>computers.

I won't say it.  Certainly computers make it easier to *use* encryption.

>The the U.S. government is concerned, as governments always are, about 
>the spread of powerful cryptography (terrorists could use it, kidnappers 
>could use it, drug dealers could use it,

Communications intercepts are rarely used to prosecute crimes.

>The (Clipper) 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.

Warrants not required, just a certification that the law enforcement 
agency has proper authority to do a communications intercept.

>"I'm starting a bank, and it's not going to be a U.S. bank," Hughes 
>says.  

>The bank will store depositors' 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. 

Where did Mexico come from?

>A Cypherpunk network bank is one way to pay for a network of truly 
>encrypted, private communications, you see.

Along with lots of other nice things.  Computers have been killing 
traditional banks for years (ever since they enabled the creation of 
Money Market Funds in the '70s).  Netbank (and its many competitors) will 
continue the process.

***********

Duncan Frissell

You don't have to be nice to nation states you meet on the way up if 
you're not coming back down. 
--- WinQwk 2.0b#1165