Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?

["Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>]

At 12:22 PM -0800 11/7/96, Peter Hendrickson wrote:
>It appears to be widely believed that cryptoanarchy is irreversible.
>Everybody believes that the race to deploy or forbid strong cryptography
>will define the outcome for a long time.
>
>I can't think of a reason why this should be so.
>
>If the wide use of strong cryptography results in widely unpopular
>activities such as sarin attacks and political assassinations, it
>would not be all that hard to forbid it, even after deployment.
>
>I am curious why many people believe this is not true.

Wide distribution of tools and channels.

Think of guns. Imagine a society which has few or no legal handguns. Some
of the  European nations, for example.

So long as guns are not legal, gun stores do not exist, gun ranges are not
available, ammunition is not sold in hardware and sporting goods stores (as
guns are too, of course, in the U.S.), and so long as the "habit" of having
guns has not spread widely, then a society can keep gun ownership levels
way down. Not zero, but way down. The "channels" for distribution are
nonexistent and the related  markets supporting guns do not exist (gun
magazines, holsters, reloading presses, gun shows, media images of people
using guns routinely, etc.). This is not to say criminals don't get access
to guns, or that some citizens do not choose to violate the law by getting
a gun, etc. What it means is that getting a gun is hard, gaining
proficiency is also hard, and the whole culture finds guns fairly foreign.

However, if guns are not outlawed, are not hard to get, may be bought and
sold at flea markets and gun shows (which is where most of my guns have
come from, and which is where over the years I bought and sold about a
dozen or so various guns, none of them transferred with any paperwork,
identities asked for, etc.), and once gun ownership reaches some threshold,
later attempts to ban guns, seize them, halt ammunition sales, etc.,
require draconian steps. (This is why so many gun owners have schemes to
bury spare guns in plastic pipes deep underground, place them in safe
deposit boxes, etc. And why so many of us reload our own ammo.)

Without taking a stand on the issues of whether guns should or should not
be restricted, the situation is quite similar to the ongoing deployment of
strong cryptography. Once widely deployed and "ingrained" in the habits of
many, later attempts to seize the newly-outlawed items are problematic.

Speech is similar to this. Once mechanisms for free speech are present in a
society, once people are used to having the "right" to speak freely, once
many channels of communication are widely available, and so on, it becomes
well nigh impossible to go back to a non-free-speech situation.

I believe, Peter, that your arguments naively ignore this sort of point.
Those in D.C. actually understand it well, and would laugh at your argument
of "If crypto turns out to be a problem, we can always ban it later."

I don't imagine the parallel argument, for free speech, would go over well
in, say, China: "We'll let people say what they want, publish what they
want, set up newspapers, buy whatever foreign magazines they want, use
computers, and gather as they wish to make whatever plans they wish to. If
we don't like the results, we'll just go back to what we had before."

The shorthand forms many of use are: the genie's out of the bottle, the
cat's out of the bag, the point of no return has been reached, etc.

As a final note, Peter asked me in private mail what I thought of some of
his points. I urged him to make his comments public, as having private
discussions is inefficent, and this is certainly an on-topic topic. And let
me say I find the posited scenario of widespread Sarin gas attacks, $100
hits, and other such things to be unrealistic, at least not solely because
Alice and Bob can communicate untappably and untraceably.

--Tim May


"The government announcement is disastrous," said Jim Bidzos,.."We warned IBM
that the National Security Agency would try to twist their technology."
[NYT, 1996-10-02]
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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,
Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."