Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?

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

At 5:55 PM -0800 11/7/96, Peter Hendrickson wrote:
>At 5:13 PM 11/7/1996, Jim McCoy wrote:
>> Getting a program to recognize a subliminal message channel is even
>> harder than teaching a human to do so, check out the book Disappearing
>> Cryptography or do a web search for "mimic functions" to see how easy it
>> is to hide messages in text which a program parses as regular English.
>> The other problem is that more and more of the data being tossed around
>> the net are images and sound files in which it is incredibly easy to
>> hide encrypted messages.
>
>I doubt it is as easy as you say.  Truly noisy sources are unusual.
>You don't have to be 100% sure you have a crypto-terrorist on your hands
>to search their house, interrogate them, and talk for awhile to
>everyone they know and then watch them carefully from then on.

"Truly noisy sources" are not at all unusual. Actually, the hard part is
ever proving a source is _not_ noisy. (There are deep issues involving
randomness here, and I usually go into the work of Kolmogorov, Chaitin, and
others at this point. Consult the archives, or see a book on information
theory.)

As Jim noted, any reasonably good crypto algorithm will produce an output
which so closely resmbles noise (modulo the issue of "Begin PGP" tags,
which can, and should, be removed) as to foil any efforts to prove it is
not noise.

The legal issue is this: can we pass laws and have them upheld by the
courts which impose severe penalties on people for the supposed crime of
having in their possession sequences of numbers which cannot be converted
to meaningful English sentences? I maintain that the Constitution says we
cannot. Of course, if the Constitution is thrown out, then the old
Cypherpunk joke may come into play: "Use a random number, go to jail." (An
Eric Hughes quote, from 1992-3.)


>In the model I am positing, there would be broad popular support for
>such policies.

I think you are assuming a lot.

--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."