Talking about Crypto Anarchy

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

I'm going to use John's comments as a jumping off point for some things I
probably should have said a while ago.

At 11:15 PM 8/6/96, John Young wrote:
>I'd like to hear Tim, too, in this Big Apple. RealAudio, perhaps.
>
>Tim's views are far more substantial and worthwhile than those play-it-safe
>Pro-Code dronings.
>
>And his pith should go out far and wide, around the world, not only out
>there on its edge.
>
>Vinnie, Robert, All Appledom, do your global duty, don't miss this chance
>to leapfrog the small-beans promoters of the crypto industry.
>
>What would you offer to set off Tim's simmering crypto-anarcho-volcano,
>make it heard round the planet?

As I think I made clear, there is little either Vinnie or Bob have "failed"
to do. I'll explain this below. It is true that I am not much of a fan of
Bob's writing style, with nuggets of truth buried in bloviations about
sacks of grenades, rubber rafts, shaking trees, pieces of the true cross,
ad nauseum, but, then, "style" is something I tend to react to perhaps more
than most. (Not the variations in style of the hundreds of folks who post
here, but the florid excesses so common in "neo-journalism," where it seems
the writers are paid by the word--as perhaps they are--and wrap their few
nuggets in stock phrases and cutesy pastiches of Chandler, Wolfe, Gibson,
Joyce, and the whole Sick Crew.

Back to important issues. Let me summarize:

1. A while back there was an announcement (I thought by Vinnie, but he
denied it to me) of a "Mac Crypto" mailing list. This announcement, which I
no longer have (not in my own archives, and not in the few CP archives that
seem to still be reachable on the Web) mentioned that the list would focus
on "real" cryptography, and _not_ on political issues (including,
presumably, the main topics that have motivated my contributions for the
past several years, and longer).

Fair enough, as the owner/maintainer of a list is free to set his policies.
I of course did not join this list, as I don't think a list which only
discussed quadratic residues and elliptic curve methods is exactly my cup
of tea...there are plenty of textbooks and other lists for this.

2. So, when Vinnie sent me his "Mac Crypto Needs You!" mini-rant, my
natural conservatism toward such things kicked in. I am not, as must be
clear now, one of those "Rah rah rah! We need to evangelize crypto!" folks.
I take a neo-Calvinist position on such things. Hustling memes is
distasteful to me. (Some will say my posts here are an attempt to sell my
ideas. Fair enough, but this is a forum I find acceptable.)

3. I told Vinnie I was not interested, that giving a "pep talk" to Mac
developers is not my thing, and that if my views on politics, crypto
anarchy, the undermining of governments, money-laundering as a tool of
liberation, etc., were not deemed acceptable for his list, then I would not
feel welcome at Apple Computer talking about the same. (In his reply, he
said he'd never said any such thing about politics not being welcome on Mac
Crypto....I could have sworn I saw such a thing, but, like I said, I can't
find this message anywhere I've looked.)

4. Blah blah blah. That is, you saw my longer article I sent to Vinnie,
explaining why I was not too interested. I won't repeat the points here.

5. I thought the subject was closed, as Vinnie then said that perhaps I was
_not_ the right person after all. I agree with this. I am not an
"evangelist," at least not one in the mold of the ever-bubbly Guy Kawasaki.
Nor am I in the mold of a Robert Hettinga. Maybe I'm more like H.L.
Mencken, or, at least I'd like to be.

Evangelists disgust me. I can't read anything Kawasaki gibbers about, nor
can I read the neo-journalism of "Spencer Katt," "Mac the Knife," or
"Robert X. Cringely."

(If you don't recognize these names, these are the terminally-hip gossip
columnists and "rumormongers" of the three leading trade rags. The style is
pretty similar to that used by Brock Meeks, Robert Hettinga, and the like.)

Now on the the Big Issue.

6. I've given up on discussing crypto anarchy in short talks because nearly
nobody in the audiences I've done it for has the foggiest notions of what
I'm talking about, and I've found no short, sweet, simple methods of
getting across the implications. Many audiences have no idea of how public
key encryption even works, let alone how digital money might work.

(Thus, panel discussions on "cryptography" bog down almost immmediately on
basic issues. There's no way to get to the "juicy" stuff when 20 minutes is
spent trying to educate an audience about what a prime number is!)

Consider how long it takes a new subscriber on this list, one who
presumably heard about this list from a background of some familiarity with
the idea of encryption, to get to the point of understanding what the terms
and phrases in my sig mean. I'd say it takes at least several weeks, with
detours into Schneier to read up on the basics, and some mental effort to
think through how anonymous remailers work, what digital money might mean
for tax collection, etc.

Even at the Hacker's Conference, which I last attended in 1993, the
discussions of cryptography were deeply unsatisfying to me. My panel, on
crypto, bogged down in trying to get across to a technically pretty
competent audience the implications of strong crypto. Clearly, the hour or
so we had was not enough, and people could only get the barest glimpses.

7. In several radio talk shows I have done, the same is true. Given that
there just isn't enough time for a careful explication of the necessary
background, the discussion and the questions from callers to the show stay
at the most basic level. While I am not dismissing the importance of basic
questions, it's clear that the discussion can never move on.

Thus, discussions tend to never get beyond the "think of crypto as
envelopes...would you want your messages all on postcards?" level. (This
envelope-postcard analogy is of course due to Phil Z., and he seems more
comfortable than I in giving this kind of talk over and over again.)

8. Even articles in "Liberty" and "Reason" magazines (plus more obscure
magazines like "Extropy") have to spend most of the article explaining the
basics, ending with a glimpse into a few topics of more recent vintage.
Mostly, it is hopeless to get into "crypto anarchy," when the article is
about how public key encryption works.

(Note: This observation is part of a larger issue about the difficulties of
building on past work. It is why so many fractious debates never get beyond
the opening salvos...over and over again. The debate over nuclear power (or
gun rights, or...) comes to mind, and I have, as with crypto anarchy, given
up on trying to "convince" groups of the truth of my views: nearly everyone
I talk to is so ignorant of the basics of radiation, containment, half
lives, ionizing radiation damage, alternatives, etc., that all discussions
bog down at the most basic of levels. When I used to have the energy--and
the foolishness--to bend someone's ear about nuclear power for a couple of
hours, I could _sometimes_ see the glimmerings of a change in positions,
the flicker of a change in preconceived notions. Mostly there was only
blankness and hostility. I get the same reaction when I try to explain the
techno-libertarian implications of strong cryptography.)

9. So, while John Young and others might want like that my "pith should go
out far and wide, around the world, not only out there on its edge," the
plain fact is that it can't go out in a talk lasting only a few hours, or,
much more likely, lasting less than an hour.

Certain after dinner speakers are adept at getting one or maybe two simple
points across in a talk--usually with some judicious humor to drive the
point home--but I am not one of them. Maybe one of you is, but not me. In
any case, getting "one or two ideas across" is not of much interest to me.

(I've also seen David Chaum struggle to just get the basic idea of
"credentials without identity" across to a tecnical audience...even when he
concentrates on only getting a single facet of his ideas across, the light
bulbs just don't go off in the heads of the audience members...at least
this was what I witnessed.)

I know there are some lawyers and law professors on this list, so the
analogy to law might be useful. To wit, can a lawyer or professor be
expected to really explain to a lay audience some complicated subject? Or
is a series of ground-laying lectures needed first? While there are
presumably lawyers willing to give pleasant after-dinner speeches on, say,
"tort reform," I suspect that very little information is conveyed to lay
audiences. (And, as I've said, I am not a talented dinner speaker.)

10. Finally, I am not a "motivational coach." I don't give pep talks to
people at companies to help them save their companies, or their platforms.
Thus, I am not interested in giving a "go out and win one for the Gipper!"
pep talk at Apple.

I hope this makes things clearer. And bear in mind that I actually _did_
spend a vast amount of my time putting together a compendium of my thoughts
and ideas in my "Cyphernomicon." [ URL:
http://www.oberlin.edu/~brchkind/cyphernomicon/ ] At more than a megabyte,
and with various chapters on crypto anarchy, anonymous markets, remailers,
and all sorts of implications, it is the fullest embodiment of my thinking
extant in any one place. Some say it would make for a start on a book, but
I can't see any publishers rushing to publish such a book (one publisher
asked me to "submit a proposal" for a book on how to use PGP...this is the
level of what publishers want from me...needless to say, I discarded his
business card immediately).

And so it goes. I'm not interested in giving a pep talk to Apple or its
developers, I outlined my reasons in other messages. And I don't believe
there's any way to adequately explain the collection of ideas I call
"crypto anarchy" in much less than a lecture series. Even if someone were
to sponsor or arrange such a lecture series, as has been done for things
like nanotechnology, I'd have to think long and hard about committing to
this. My inclination is to tell those who ask for such a talk or lecture
series to "RTFM."

Regards,

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."