Cypherpunk Commitment? [Was: We are ALL guests (except Eric)]

[Michael Pierson <wfgodot@vespucci.iquest.com>]

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Eric Hughes <eric@remailer.net> wrote:
 
> ...  It's comfortable to write manifestos, express your position,
> be indignant at the government, and teach privacy.  We generally live
> in free societies where there is little recourse taken against speech.
> It is must less comfortable to use tortious cryptography, run a
> remailer, finesse export controls, and deploy code.  Far and away the
> most extreme reactions have come from what people did and not from
> what they said.  Speech affects the world, but action affects it more,
> because every word that affects the world only through a sequence of
> body motions.  Cypherpunks get listened to not because we talk a lot;
> that's insufficient.  Cypherpunks get listened to because we do
> things.

 
I think you make a cogent point here.  I agree that it is
insufficient for cypherpunks to merely pay lip service to their
ideals if they wish to see them prevail.  Especially when those who 
want to build a Surveillance State Infrastructure into the National 
Information Infrastructure are busy writing legislation, cultivating
their media assets, and cutting back room deals.  I believe that John
Philpot Curran's 18th century assertion that "It is the common fate 
of the indolent to see their rights become prey to the active."  is 
true for cypherpunks today.

The proponents of government mandated key escrow are certainly "doing
something", and in the absence of an active and coordinated
opposition, I think they will get their way, and that troubles me 
deeply.  I doubt that they will wait long for the widespread use of 
seemlessly integrated OLE, OpenDoc compliant crypto tools to become 
a reality before they make their move.  If these tools should
arrive and come into widespread use in time to make a difference,
it will be because the developers of these tools and those
advocating their use were driven to take action by an awareness of 
the urgent sociopolitical imperatives involved, not the economic ones.

I think most of us here appreciate what an insidiously malignant menace
government mandated key escrow represents to the survival of our
right to privacy and our liberty in general, both now, and even more
so in the pervasively networked world we will inhabit in the 21st
century.  It is my deep conviction that the battle now brewing over
the right of the people to freely use cryptography is of the most 
crucial consequence for the freedom that we, and our children, and 
our grandchildren will have in the next century and beyond.  And it
is a battle that will be lost if we don't commit our _deeds_ as well
our words to the struggle.  This is cause worth "doing something" 
about.  This is a cause worth making sacrifices for.  I thought 
cypherpunks were supposed to be part of the vanguard. If not us who?
											   
The unencumbered freedom to use cryptography to preserve our privacy
will not prevail on its own; the forces arrayed against it are 
powerful and determined.  If it prevails, it will be because we
fought with greater determination, intelligence, and commitment, and
were diligent in enlisting allies to our cause by convincing them it
was a righteous one.


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