Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?

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

At 6:56 PM -0600 11/7/96, Andrew Loewenstern wrote:
>TCM writes:
>> Wide distribution of tools and channels.
>
>A very important point that I haven't seen raised in this thread is _why_
>strong crypto is going to be widespread and thus impossible to control.
>Strong crypto is going to be the foundation of the information age.  Sorry
>for

Exactly, and I reemphasized the connection with digital commerce in my last
message.

I guess we haven't mentioned this enough recently, but in the early days of
the list we certainly did. We emphasized that a desirable goal is to get
strong crypto widely distributed, ubiquitously used. In commerce, between
machines (a la John Gilmore's SWAN), in intranets, in wireless data
transfers, to satellites, etc. Get it so entwined that trying to
crypto-lobotomize the Net would kill the patient.

(The Soviets and Eastern Europeans found this to be a problem...once they'd
incorporated enough of modern technology into their ways of doing things,
it was too late to try to pull the plug. Even the Chinese found that fax
machines and the Usenet were unstoppable. Even as early as 1989, pulling
the plug on the Usenet and banning fax machines was not an option. Rolling
over demonstrators with tanks was still an option, of course, and this
quelled the overt signs of trouble for a while.)


...
>middle men).  Weak Crypto (i.e. GAK) does not offer these features because
>the
>weak point in the chain becomes a mostly disinterested low-wage employee at
>the KRC, which is likely to be operated by a foreign government!  Any
>businessman can immediately understand why this is unacceptable, especially
>with all of the economic espionage stories going around corporate america.

And the GAK advocates have never clarified how an international system will
work. Even if one accepts the dubious hypothesis that the U.S. has a
noncorrupt, benign government, what of other countries? Is Ghaddaffi the
keeper of keys in Libya? How about the military government of Burma?

No business can operate if it thinks some tinhorn military ruler--or Craig
Livingstone in the White House--has trivial access to its most secret
communications, to its financial transactions, and may sell secrets to its
competitors or to other nations.

I can imagine no scheme which could possibly solve this problem. None. The
problem of "rogue governments" (and maybe all governments are rogue to at
least some other governments) means no simple solution. And the
Administration has done nothing to clarify how this will all work.

We can use this confusion to further undermine the U.S. position on GAK.
Lobbing grenades, sowing mistrust, and even "monkeywrenching" the system.


--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."