At 12:25 PM -0700 8/24/00, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>On Wed, 23 Aug 2000, Tim May wrote:
>
>>Having Cypherpunks meetings inside the belly of the beast may strike
>>some as a great irony, but it was what Mike the Computer would call a
>>"funny once."
>>
>>I strongly, strongly urge Cypherpunks to "just say no" to meetings
>>held at cop centers, whether these centers are the Campaign for
>>Marijuans Eradication chopper landing site, the Regional Citizen-Unit
>>Retraining Center, or the Hoover Building.
>>
>>Cops are _not_ our friends. Anyone who thinks otherwise, in the
>>context of freedom and crypto anarchy, is a fool.
>
>Mister Tim,
>
> I have to say I don't agree with you. I don't see the Cypherpunks
>list as an association of criminals. I don't have a problem with
>the idea of teaching ordinary people to use crypto to protect
>themselves from ripoff artists, criminals, and spies. I see the
>police as a natural ally in any 'defense of sheeple' activities
>folk undertake.
Let's have a reality check here, shall we?
Fact is, "ordinary people" are not in any significant danger of
having their e-mail or files intercepted and read by "ripoff artists,
criminals, and spies." Next-door neighbors and other non-governmental
entities rarely have access to packet sniffers, Carnivore-type
intercept systems, or other surveillance gear.
Longer term, crypto will indeed be more important for ordinary folks,
for lots of reasons. But it'll be a hard sell convincing Mom and Pop
or Joe Sixpack that they need to encrypt all of their e-mail to each
other to stop "ripoff artists" from somehow gaining access to their
traffic and reading it.
(You're welcome to try to sell this to them. Knock yourself out. But
history shows that even very few of _us_ routinely sign our messages,
use PGP, etc. There are many reasons for this, well-covered in past
discussions.)
Fact is, crypto takes effort to use. And the fax effect means it
takes effort at the other end, too. So not only must Joe Sixpack
learn PGP and install it and use it, but Fred and Mary at the other
end must use it as well, else he can't communicate using crypto.
Given that crypto takes effort, who uses it? Some people use it
because it's seen as The Right Thing to Do. I hate it when I get a
PGP-encrypted message from a stranger, fire up my
non-integrated-into-my-mail-program version of PGP, decrypt it, and
find a message saying something like: "Hi, Tim! Just saying Hi.
Thanks for all the cool articles."
Who uses crypto on a regular basis are those for whom the risks of
getting caught with certain material or certain thoughts are nonzero,
and for whom the penalties are significant. The usual examples:
freedom fighters plotting to blow up government buildings, child
pornographers, money launderers making plans, etc.
These kinds of users are the ones which National Technical
Means--Carnivore, NSA listening posts, Echelon, San Diego-developed
sniffers, etc.--are used against.
Longer-term, there is the danger that unencrypted mail will show up
in search engines (especially offshore search engines, as such
interceptions in the U.S. would legally run afoul of the ECPA). At
this point, at least a few years off, automatic encryption should be
more widespread. (In the same way credit card transactions are
encrypted automatically.)
>
> There will be some tensions, because there are laws which cannot
>stand in a state where people have access to strong crypto and a
>good protocol library. But society, and law, will have to adapt,
>just as it, however belatedly, adapted to the existence of the
>printing press. Crypto will either be criminalized and the cops
>will prosecute it, or it will become a civil right and the cops
>will defend it.
Crypto is speech, and there are no significant court precedents
banning crypto speech or banning the use of crypto tools. Key escrow
was never mandated--never even really became technically plausible,
fortunately--and _had_ it been mandated, numerous groups would have
jumped in with legal challenges based largely on the First and Fourth
Amendments. It is highly likely that mandatory key escrow would be
overturned as a clear-cut violation of the First Amendment, as it
compels speech to be in certain forms even when done in private.
(On a side note, the government has not been able to even compel
non-English speakers to speak in English, or in any other
understandable language. A person speaking only his own private
language may have a hard time dealing with society, filling out his
tax forms properly, etc., but there is no official law saying he must
learn English or Spanish or Mandarin or other widely-used languages
in the U.S. And of course not in private or in chats with his family
and friends, even if it means wiretaps are ineffective.)
As for the "cops will defend it" point, this is naive. Cops make
busts, they don't "defend" rights.
>Right now, it's neither. Getting it into the
>hands of the masses is the strongest thing we can do to make it
>into a civil right. Behaving as an elite who don't give a damn
>about the masses and treat the cops as enemies is the strongest
>thing we can do to criminalize it.
It is a click away to anyone who wants it. As I said, my militia and
gun show friends are all aware of it.
It's a canard to claim that your little effort to hold some kind of
"Cryptostock" festival in San Francisco, at a police station!, will
somehow make crypto "available to the massses" in ways it already is
not. Delusions of grandeur sounds more like it.
>
>Besides, nobody asked you to participate.
>
> Ray
As I've said many times, "knock yourself out." You and Len and
Anonymous are the ones calling for collective participation. Go for
it, dude.
I'll check back in a few months to see how far you've progressed.
--Tim May
--
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
