Brain Tennis with Dorthy

[Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>]

I'm following the Brain Tennis Match between Dorothy Denning and John
Gilmore on encryption and the right to absolute privacy on Hot Wired
(http://www.hotwired.com/braintennis/96/31/index0a.html).

Were I a participant in this exercise, I would lob the following to Dorothy:

I have to assume that Dorothy believes in absolute privacy (in some areas).
I am assuming, for example, that she does not believe in torture as an
interrogation technique.  I assume, therefore, that she believes in absolute
privacy in the individual brain.  While she may support imprisonment (or the
threat of imprisonment) as an interrogation technique (jailing for
contempt), I think she would oppose bringing out the hot pokers.

I have a wider point to make but please indulge me for a moment.  The fact
that many wiretapping advocates oppose torture raises a host of absolutely
*fascinating* questions:

1)  If it were technically possible to compel us (without pain) to disclose
the contents of our mind, would Dorothy support the application of such
techniques to suspects (under judicial warrants or other lawful authority)?
That is, does the opposition to torture arise from squeamishness about pain
or from some residual recognition of the right of personal autonomy. 

2)  Would those who support wiretapping but oppose torture waive their
opposition to torture in certain cases.  That is, if the continued existence
of the United States or indeed Life on Earth were dependent on a bit of
information stored in the brain of a single person, would those who
countenance some invasions of privacy in the social interest allow torture
in these (admittedly) rare cases?

Back to the main thread:

Dorothy, if you oppose torture then you have granted the validity of John's
belief in absolute privacy.  You are merely quibbling about where that zone
of privacy ends.  You might say that the zone of privacy ends at the brain
but that is too narrow a range.  Personal autonomy exists in the technical
sense because only I command my thoughts.  Only I can order my muscles to
move.  I can be chained and tortured and even hooked up to some sort of
electrical apparatus to attempt to short circuit my muscular control and get
my hand to jump but such coercion is pretty crude.  If someone else wants me
to dance a Waltz smoothly or write a paragraph of original material, they
are going to need my cooperation (however secured).  My zone of absolute
privacy extends to those things I can directly control with my thoughts.  

This area also extends to communications.  If I arrange things such that no
one else can overhear me and whisper something to another person, then we
both share knowledge that can only be secured by others through torture (and
not always then) or through the decision of one of us to give it up.  The
same thought in two heads is still as much within the zone of privacy as
that thought within one head.  And so on multiplied by 1000.  The zone of
privacy arises from the inability of other people to directly command the
mind of one person or a thousand persons.  We have the control.  Absent
torture, you can't get it if we choose not to give it to you.

Note that this zone already extends beyond the brain case.  It travels down
our nerves to the tips of our fingers and toes.  We command those nerves and
that wiring represents an extension of our brain.  One of the things that we
can do with those nerves is to use them to generate signals of various
kinds.  This signal generation is *also* an extension of our brain.  It is
under our control.  If we like, we can arrange things so that no one else or
only the intended recipient can know our thoughts.  We have that power.  We
have used our zone of privacy to extend its scope.  We have done (continue
to do) it all from inside our brains.  We have not left that sanctuary --
that fortress built by the rejection of torture by advanced societies.

Therefore, if we develop the technical means to *extend* that zone of
privacy beyond our heads, bodies, and those we can whisper to, you can only
break the zone by the torture which you have already eschewed.  The nature
of the zone of privacy is not a grant from the State, it is the result of
our nature as independent *actors* and our collective decision (in the West
at least) to minimize the use of torture by governments.  

The Internet itself is an example of individual cooperation to extend
communications channels from one person to many (it was built by its users).
Those same users can, if they choose, use their autonomy to build in
security features of their collective design.  It belongs to them as their
minds belong to them.  It is an extension of those minds.

Dorothy, you or I may not like the thoughts or communications of specific
people but they have the same right to secure those thoughts and
communications if they choose to.

Now in reading all this, you may wonder what this has to do with key escrow
and Gang of Seven (G7) crypto policy.  Dorothy, as virtually the sole
non-government employee who supports Clipper and SKE, I believe you to be
unique in another way.  I think that you can be "saved" from tyranny (which
is always rough on the tyrants).  Unlike the government employees on your
side of the argument, you have generally not favored outlawing private use
of strong crypto.  We would like to separate you from them on this
fundamental question of personal autonomy.  The Century of Blood that the
world has just lived through at the hands of its governments (160 million
murdered) causes many of us to believe that some of your allies (who BTW
currently include the Kingdom of the Saud and the People's Republic of
China) would use torture and other very inhumane means to violate even our
traditional zone of privacy.

If you will merely grant to us the *morality* of our attempt to use the zone
of privacy which you have granted to us to extend that zone of privacy, we
will grant you an understanding of your fears of this new world (which many
of us share).  

Please, separate yourself absolutely from the torturers.

DCF