4.8.1. "Is there an agenda here beyond just ensuring privacy?"
- Definitely! I think I can safely say that for nearly all
political persuasions on the Cypherpunks list. Left, right,
libertarian, or anarchist, there's much more to to strong
crypto than simple privacy. Privacy qua privacy is fairly
uninteresting. If all one wants is privacy, one can simply
keep to one's self, stay off high-visibility lists like
this, and generally stay out of trouble.
- Many of us see strong crypto as the key enabling technology
for a new economic and social system, a system which will
develop as cyberspace becomes more important. A system
which dispenses with national boundaries, which is based on
voluntary (even if anonymous) free trade. At issue is the
end of governments as we know them today. (Look at
interactions on the Net--on this list, for example--and
you'll see many so-called nationalities, voluntary
interaction, and the almost complete absence of any "laws."
Aside from their being almost no rules per se for the
Cypherpunks list, there are essentially no national laws
that are invokable in any way. This is a fast-growing
trend.)
+ Motivations for Cypherpunks
- Privacy. If maintaining privacy is the main goal, there's
not much more to say. Keep a low profile, protect data,
avoid giving out personal information, limit the number
of bank loans and credit applications, pay cash often,
etc.
- Privacy in activism.
+ New Structures. Using cryptographic constructs to build
new political, economic, and even social structures.
- Political: Voting, polling, information access,
whistleblowing
- Economic: Free markets, information markets, increased
liquidity, black markets
- Social: Cyberspatial communities, True Names
- Publically inspectable algorithms always win out over
private, secret algorithms
4.8.2. "What is the American attitude toward privacy and
encryption?"
+ There are two distinct (and perhaps simultaneously held)
views that have long been found in the American psyche:
- "A man's home is his castle." "Mind your own business."
The frontier and Calvinist sprit of keeping one's
business to one's self.
- "What have you got to hide?" The nosiness of busybodies,
gossiping about what others are doing, and being
suspicious of those who try too hard to hide what they
are doing.
+ The American attitude currently seems to favor privacy over
police powers, as evidenced by a Time-CNN poll:
- "In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last
week by Yankelovich Partners, two-thirds said it was more
important to protect the privacy of phone calls than to
preserve the ability of police to conduct wiretaps. When
informed about the Clipper Chip, 80% said they opposed
it." [Philip Elmer-Dewitt, "Who Should Keep the Keys,"
_TIME_, 1994-03-04.]
- The answer given is clearly a function of how the question
is phrased. Ask folks if they favor "unbreakable
encryption" or "fortress capabilities" for terrorists,
pedophiles, and other malefactors, and they'll likely give
a quite different answer. It is this tack now being taken
by the Clipper folks. Watch out for this!
- Me, I have no doubts.
- As Perry Metzger puts it, "I find the recent disclosures
concerning U.S. Government testing of the effects of
radiation on unknowing human subjects to be yet more
evidence that you simply cannot trust the government with
your own personal safety. Some people, given positions of
power, will naturally abuse those positions, often even if
such abuse could cause severe injury or death. I see little
reason, therefore, to simply "trust" the U.S. government --
and given that the U.S. government is about as good as they
get, its obvious that NO government deserves the blind
trust of its citizens. "Trust us, we will protect you"
rings quite hollow in the face of historical evidence.
Citizens must protect and preserve their own privacy -- the
government and its centralized cryptographic schemes
emphatically cannot be trusted." [P.M., 1994-01-01]
4.8.3. "How is 1994 like 1984?"
- The television ad for Clipper: "Clipper--why 1994 _will_ be
like 1984"
+ As Mike Ingle puts it:
- 1994: Wiretapping is privacy
Secrecy is openness
Obscurity is security
4.8.4. "We anticipate that computer networks will play a more and
more important role in many parts of our lives. But this
increased computerization brings tremendous dangers for
infringing privacy. Cypherpunks seek to put into place
structures which will allow people to preserve their privacy
if they choose. No one will be forced to use pseudonyms or
post anonymously. But it should be a matter of choice how
much information a person chooses to reveal about himself
when he communicates. Right now, the nets don't give you
that much choice. We are trying to give this power to
people." [Hal Finney, 1993-02-23]
4.8.5. "If cypherpunks contribute nothing else we can create a real
privacy advocacy group, advocating means of real self-
empowerment, from crypto to nom de guerre credit cards,
instead of advocating further invasions of our privacy as the
so-called privacy advocates are now doing!" [Jim Hart, 1994-
09-08]
By Tim May, see README
HTML by Jonathan Rochkind