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.
By Tim May, see README
HTML by Jonathan Rochkind