13.7.1. Strong political action is emerging on the Net
- right-wing conspiracy theorists, like Linda Thompson
+ Net has rapid response to news events (Waco, Tienenmen,
Russia)
- with stories often used by media (lots of reporters on
Net, easy to cull for references, Net has recently become
tres trendy)
- Aryan Nation in Cyberspace
- (These developments bother many people I mention them to.
Nothing can be done about who uses strong crypto. And most
fasicst/racist situations are made worse by state
sponsorship--apartheid laws, Hitler's Germany, Pol Pot's
killing fields, all were examples of the state enforcing
racist or genocidal laws. The unbreakable crypto that the
Aryan Nation gets is more than offset by the gains
elsewhere, and the undermining of central authority.)
- shows the need for strong crypto...else governments will
infiltrate and monitor these political groups
13.7.2. Cypherpunks and Lobbying Efforts
+ "Why don't Cypherpunks have a lobbying effort?"
+ we're not "centered" near Washington, D.C., which seems
to be an essential thing (as with EFF, ACLU, EPIC, CPSR,
etc.)
- D.C. Cypherpunks once volunteered (April, 1993) to make
this their special focus, but not much has been heard
since. (To be fair to them, political lobbying is
pretty far-removed from most Cypherpunks interests.)
- no budget, no staff, no office
+ "herding cats" + no financial stakes = why we don't do
more
+ it's very hard to coordinate dozens of free-thinking,
opinionated, smart people, especially when there's no
whip hand, no financial incentive, no way to force them
into line
- I'm obviously not advocating such force, just noting a
truism of systems
+ "Should Cypherpunks advocate breaking laws to achieve
goals?"
- "My game is to get cryptography available to all, without
violating the law. This mean fighting Clipper, fighting
idiotic export restraints, getting the government to
change it's stance on cryptography, through arguements
and letter pointing out the problems ... This means
writing or promoting strong cryptography....By violating
the law, you give them the chance to brand you
"criminal," and ignore/encourage others to ignore what
you have to say." [Bob Snyder, 4-28-94]
13.7.3. "How can nonlibertarians (liberals, for example) be convinced
of the need for strong crypto?"
- "For liberals, I would examine some pet cause and examine
the consequences of that cause becoming "illegal." For
instance, if your friends are "pro choice," you might ask
them what they would do if the right to lifers outlawed
abortion. Would they think it was wrong for a rape victim
to get an abortion just because it was illegal? How would
they feel about an abortion "underground railroad"
organized via a network of "stations" coordinated via the
Internet using "illegal encryption"? Or would they trust
Clipper in such a situation?
"Everyone in America is passionate about something. Such
passion usually dispenses with mere legalism, when it comes
to what the believer feels is a question of fundamental
right and wrong. Hit them with an argument that addresses
their passion. Craft a pro-crypto argument that helps
preserve the object of that passion." [Sandy Sandfort, 1994-
06-30]
13.7.4. Tension Between Governments and Citizens
- governments want more monitoring...big antennas to snoop on
telecommunications, "
- people who protect themselves are sometimes viewed with
suspicion
+ Americans have generally been of two minds about privacy:
- None of your damn business, a man's home is his
castle..rugged individualism, self-sufficiency, Calvinism
- What have you got to hide? Snooping on neighbors
+ These conflicting views are held simultaneously, almost
like a tensor that is not resolvable to some resultant
vector
- this dichotomy cuts through legal decisions as well
13.7.5. "How does the Cypherpunks group differ from lobbying groups
like the EFF, CPSR, and EPIC?"
- We're more disorganized (anarchic), with no central office,
no staff, no formal charter, etc.
- And the political agenda of the aforementioned groups is
often at odds with personal liberty. (support by them for
public access programs, subsidies, restrictions on
businesses, etc.)
- We're also a more radical group in nearly every way, with
various flavors of political extremism strongly
represented. Mostly anarcho-capitalists and strong
libertarians, and many "no compromises" privacy advocates.
(As usual, my apologies to any Maoists or the like who
don't feel comfortable being lumped in with the
libertarians....if you're out there, you're not speaking
up.) In any case, the house of Cypherpunks has many rooms.
- We were called "Crypto Rebels" in Steven Levy's "Wired"
article (issue 1.2, early 1993). We can represent a
_radical alternative_ to the Beltway lawyers that dominate
EFF, EPIC, etc. No need to compromise on things like
Clipper, Software Key Escrow, Digital Telephony, and the
NII. But, of course, no input to the legislative process.
- But there's often an advantage to having a much more
radical, purist body out in the wings, making the
"rejectionist" case and holding the inner circle folks to a
tougher standard of behavior.
- And of course there's the omnipresent difference that we
tend to favor direct action through technology over
politicking.
13.7.6. Why is government control of crypto so dangerous?
+ dangers of government monopoly on crypto and sigs
- can "revoke your existence"
- no place to escape to (historically an important social
relief valve)
13.7.7. NSA's view of crypto advocates
- "I said to somebody once, this is the revenge of people
who couldn't go to Woodstock because they had too much trig
homework. It's a kind of romanticism about privacy and the
kind of, you know, "you won't get my crypto key until you
pry it from my dead cold fingers" kind of stuff. I have to
say, you know, I kind of find it endearing." [Stuart Baker,
counsel, NSA, CFP '94]
13.7.8. EFF
- eff@eff.org
+ How to Join
- $40, get form from many places, EFFector Online,
- membership@eff.org
+ EFFector Online
- ftp.eff.org, pub/EFF/Newsletters/EFFector
+ Open Platform
- ftp://ftp.eff.org/pub/EFF/Policy/Open_Platform
- National Information Infrastructure
13.7.9. "How can the use of cryptography be hidden?"
+ Steganography
- microdots, invisible ink
- where even the existence of a coded message gets one shot
+ Methods for Hiding the Mere Existence of Encrypted Data
+ in contrast to the oft-cited point (made by crypto
purists) that one must assume the opponent has full
access to the cryptotext, some fragments of decrypted
plaintext, and to the algorithm itself, i.e., assume the
worst
- a condition I think is practically absurd and
unrealistic
- assumes infinite intercept power (same assumption of
infinite computer power would make all systems besides
one-time pads breakable)
- in reality, hiding the existence and form of an
encrypted message is important
+ this will be all the more so as legal challenges to
crypto are mounted...the proposed ban on encrypted
telecom (with $10K per day fine), various governmental
regulations, etc.
- RICO and other broad brush ploys may make people very
careful about revealing that they are even using
encryption (regardless of how secure the keys are)
+ steganography, the science of hiding the existence of
encrypted information
- secret inks
- microdots
- thwarting traffic analysis
- LSB method
+ Packing data into audio tapes (LSB of DAT)
+ LSB of DAT: a 2GB audio DAT will allow more than 100
megabytes in the LSBs
- less if algorithms are used to shape the spectrum to
make it look even more like noise
- but can also use the higher bits, too (since a real-
world recording will have noise reaching up to
perhaps the 3rd or 4th bit)
+ will manufacturers investigate "dithering" circuits?
(a la fat zero?)
- but the race will still be on
+ Digital video will offer even more storage space (larger
tapes)
- DVI, etc.
- HDTV by late 1990s
+ Messages can be put into GIFF, TIFF image files (or even
noisy faxes)
- using the LSB method, with a 1024 x 1024 grey scale
image holding 64KB in the LSB plane alone
- with error correction, noise shaping, etc., still at
least 50KB
- scenario: already being used to transmit message
through international fax and image transmissions
+ The Old "Two Plaintexts" Ploy
- one decoding produces "Having a nice time. Wish you
were here."
- other decoding, of the same raw bits, produces "The
last submarine left this morning."
- any legal order to produce the key generates the first
message
+ authorities can never prove-save for torture or an
informant-that another message exists
- unless there are somehow signs that the encrypted
message is somehow "inefficiently encrypted,
suggesting the use of a dual plaintext pair method"
(or somesuch spookspeak)
- again, certain purist argue that such issues (which are
related to the old "How do you know when to stop?"
question) are misleading, that one must assume the
opponent has nearly complete access to everything
except the actual key, that any scheme to combine
multiple systems is no better than what is gotten as a
result of the combination itself
- and just the overall bandwidth of data...
13.7.10. next Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference will be March
1995, San Francisco
13.7.11. Places to send messages to
- cantwell@eff.org, Subject: I support HR 3627
- leahy@eff.org, Subject: I support hearings on Clipper
13.7.12. Thesis: Crypto can become unstoppable if critical mass is
reached
- analogy: the Net...too scattered, too many countries, too
many degrees of freedom
- so scattered that attempts to outlaw strong crypto will be
futile...no bottlenecks, no "mountain passes" (in a race to
the pass, beyond which the expansion cannot be halted
except by extremely repressive means)
13.7.13. Keeping the crypto genie from being put in the bottle
- (though some claim the genie was never _in_ the bottle,
historically)
- ensuring that enough people are using it, and that the Net
is using it
- a _threshold_, a point of no return
13.7.14. Activism practicalities
+ "Why don't we buy advertising time like Perot did?"
+ This and similar points come up in nearly all political
discussions (I'm seeing in also in talk.politics.guns).
The main reasons it doesn't happen are:
- ads cost a lot of money
- casual folks rarely have this kind of money to spend
- "herding cats" comes to mind, i.e., it's nearly
impossible to coordinate the interests of people to
gather money, set up ad campaigns, etc.
- In my view, a waste of efforts. The changes I want won't
come through a series of ads that are just fingers in the
dike. (More cynically, Americans are getting the government
they've been squealing for. My interest is in bypassing
their avarice and repression, not in changing their minds.)
- Others feel differently, from posts made to the list.
Practically speaking, though, organized political activity
is difficult to achieve with the anarchic nonstructure of
the Cypherpunks group. Good luck!
By Tim May, see README
HTML by Jonathan Rochkind