Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

At 12:22 PM 11/7/96 -0800, 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.

Simple analogy:  Suppose you put two people into a room with a deck of 
playing cards and a table, instructing "Person A" to build a house-of-cards, 
and telling "Person B" to stop him from achieving his goal.  Who do you 
think will win?  Obviously, the latter will win:  It's vastly easier to 
knock such a structure down than to build it in the first place,  and all 
"Person B" has to do is occasionally take a whack at the structure. 

BTW, some of your confusion is probably based is the false assumptions in 
your last sentence above.  "..wide use of strong cryptography results in 
widely unpopular activities such as sarin attacks and political 
assassinations."

First, I contend that the unpopularity of political assassinations is based 
far less on their presumed undesirability, and much more so on the fact that 
the average citizen (currently) has no input on who is being killed.  He 
might well suppose that the killings are trying to deny him the little power 
and influence he has in the political system. ("They shot [fill in the 
blank}!  I voted for him!")  But what if assassination was made far more 
accessible to the common man?  Suppose, say, the approval of one million 
citizens was the only thing necessary to have an assassination legally 
accomplished?   Or, more likely in practice, the vote of a million citizens 
was interpreted as a kind of terminal veto over that particular politician 
or government employee, who would have to resign or face the (lethal) 
consquences!  In that case, assassinations wouldn't be seen as bad, they'd 
be the natural consequence of a politician who overstays his welcome and 
ignores numerous warnings.

Second, things like "sarin attacks" are, in fact, the classic example of 
actions which WOULD NOT HAPPEN under a crypto-anarchy.  Over the last 30 
years or so, "terrorism" has come to be associated with random attacks on 
innocent citizens.  But I propose that such attacks only occur because the 
better, more appropriate targets are purposely made hard to attack.  Most 
people don't realize this.  But consider:  Wouldn't the people who bombed 
the OKC Federal building have preferred to kill, for example, the top 50 
government officials responsible for Waco and Ruby Ridge, rather than 150 
ordinary government employees?  Of course they would!  

If crypto-anarchy means anything to the future of terrorism, it's about 
helping to ensure that the people truly guilty of oppression get targeted in 
preference to anybody else.  Naturally, such a point of view will be wildly 
unpopular...with the guilty few.  The rest of us should like it just fine.

This is why crypto-anarchy will be so popular with the public once it's in 
place.  No more taxes, governments, militaries, wars, holocausts, etc.  
_THAT'S_ yet one more reason why it's irreversible:  people will have seen the 
results of both systems, and they'll be damned if they're going to allow 
crooked politicians back in the game!


Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com