13.11.1. Deals, deals, deals! - pressures by Administration...software key escrow, digital telephony, cable regulation + and suppliers need government support on legislation, benefits, spectrum allocation, etc - reports that Microsoft is lobbying intensively to gain control of big chunks of spectrum...could fit with cable set-top box negotiations, Teledesic, SKE, etc. - EFF even participates in some of these deals. Being "inside the Beltway" has this kind of effect, where one is either a "player" or a "non-player." (This is my interpretation of how power corrupts all groups that enter the Beltway.) Shmoozing and a desire to help. 13.11.2. using crypto to bypass laws on contacts and trade with other countries - one day it's illegal to have contact with China, the next day it's encouraged + one day it's legal to have contact with Haiti, the next day there's an embargo (and in the case of Haiti, the economic effects fall on on the poor--the tens of thousands fleeing are not fleeing the rulers, but the poverty made worse by the boycott - (The military rulers are just the usual thugs, but they're not "our" thugs, for reasons of history. Aristide would almost certainly be as bad, being a Marxist priest. Thus, I consider the breakin of the embargo to be a morally good thing to do. - who's to say why Haiti is suddenly to be shunned? By force of law, no less! 13.11.3. Sun Tzu's "Art of War" has useful tips (more useful than "The Prince") - work with lowliest - sabotage good name of enemy - spread money around - I think the events of the past year, including... 13.11.4. The flakiness of current systems... - The current crypto infrastructure is fairly flaky, though the distributed web-of-trust model is better than some centralized system, of coure. What I mean is that many aspects are slow, creaky, and conducive to errors. - In the area of digital cash, what we have now is not even as advanced as was seen with real money in Sumerian times! (And I wouldn't trust the e-mail "message in a bottle" approach for any nontrivial financial transactions.) - Something's got to change. The NII/Superhighway/Infobahn people have plans, but their plans are not likely to mesh well with ours. A challenge for us to consider. 13.11.5. "Are there dangers in being too paranoid?" + As Eric Hughes put it, "paranoia is cryptography's occupational hazard." - "The effect of paranoia is self-delusion of the following form--that one's possible explanations are skewed toward malicious attacks, by individuals, that one has the technical knowledge to anticipate. This skewing creates an inefficient allocation of mental energy, it tends toward the personal, downplaying the possibility of technical error, and it begins to close off examination of technicalities not fully understood. "Those who resist paranoia will become better at cryptography than those who do not, all other things being equal. Cryptography is about epistemology, that is, assurances of truth, and only secondarily about ontology, that is, what actually is true. The goal of cryptography is to create an accurate confidence that a system is private and secure. In order to create that confidence, the system must actually be secure, but security is not sufficient. There must be confidence thatthe way by which this security becomes to be believed is robust and immune to delusion. "Paranoia creates delusion. As a direct and fundamental result, it makes one worse at cryptography. At the outside best, it makes one slower, as the misallocation of attention leads one down false trails. Who has the excess brainpower for that waste? Certainly not I. At the worst, paranoia makes one completely ineffective, not only in technical means but even more so in the social context in which cryptography is necessarily relevant." [Eric Hughes, 1994-05-14] + King Alfred Plan, blacks - plans to round up 20 million blacks - RFK, links to LAPD, Western Goals, Birch, KKK - RFA #9, 23, 38 + organized crime situation, perhaps intelligence community - damaging to blacks, psychological 13.11.6. The immorality of U.S. boycotts and sanctions - as with Haiti, where a standard and comparatively benign and harmless military dictatorship is being opposed, we are using force to interfere with trade, food shipments, financial dealings, etc. - invasion of countries that have not attacked other countries...a major new escalation of U.S. militarism - crypto will facillitate means of underming imperialism 13.11.7. The "reasonableness" trap - making a reasonable thing into a mandatory thing - this applies to what Cypherpunks should ever be prepared to support + An example: A restaurant offers to replace dropped items (dropped on the floor, literally) for free...a reasonable thing to offer customers (something I see frequently). So why not make it the law? Because then the reasonable discretion of the restaurant owner would be lost, and some customers could "game against" (exploit the letter of the law) the system. Even threaten lawsuits. - (And libertarians know that "my house, my rules" applies to restaurants and other businesses, absent a contract spelling exceptions out.) - A more serious example is when restaurants (again) find it "reasonable" to hire various sorts of qualified people. What may be "reasonable" is one thing, but too often the government decides to _formalize_ this and takes away the right to choose. (In my opinion, no person or group has any "right" to a job unless the employer freely offers it. Yes, this could included discrimination against various groups. Yes, we may dislike this. But the freedom to choose is a much more basic right than achieving some ideal of equality is.) - And when "reasonableness" is enforced by law, the game- playing increases. In effect, some discretion is needed to reject claims that are based on gaming. Markets naturally work this way, as no "basic rights" or contracts are being violated. - Fortunately, strong crypto makes this nonsense impossible. Perforce, people will engage in contracts only voluntarily. 13.11.8. "How do we get agreement on protocols?" - Give this idea up immediately! Agreement to behave in certain ways is almost never possible. - Is this an indictment of anarchy? - No, because the way agreement is sort of reached is through standards or examplars that people can get behind. Thus, we don't get "consensus" in advance on the taste of Coca Cola...somebody offers Coke for sale and then the rest is history. - PGP is a more relevant example. The examplar is on a "take it or leave it" basis, with minor improvements made by others, but within the basic format.
Next Page: 14. Other Advanced Crypto Applications
Previous Page: 13.10 Deals, the EFF, and Digital Telephony Bill
By Tim May, see README
HTML by Jonathan Rochkind