16.11.1. "How do you square these ideas with democracy?"
- I don't; democracy has run amok, fulfilling de
Tocqueville's prediction that American democracy would last
only until Americans discovered they could pick the pockets
of their neighbors at the ballot box
- little chance of changing public opinion, of educating them
- crypto anarchy is a movement of individual opting out, not
of mass change and political action
16.11.2. "Is there a moral responsibility to ensure that the overall
effects of crypto anarchy are more favorable than unfavorable
before promoting it?"
- I don't think so, any more than Thomas Jefferson should
have analyzed the future implications of freedom before
pushing it so strongly.
- All decisions have implications. Some even cost lives. By
not becoming a doctor working in Sub-Saharan Africa, have I
"killed thousands"? Certainly I might have saved the lives
of thousands of villagers. But I did not kill them just
because I chose not to be a doctor. Likewise, by giving
money to starving peasants in Bangladesh, lives could
undeniably be "saved." But not giving the money does not
murder them.
- But such actions of omission are not the same, in my mind,
as acts of comission. My freedom, via crypto anarchy, is
not an act of force in and of itself.
- Developing an idea is not the same as aggression.
- Crypto anarchy is about personal withdrawal from the
system, the "technologies of disconnection," in Kevin
Kelly's words.
16.11.3. "Should individuals have the power to decide what they will
reveal to others, and to authorities?"
- For many or even most of us, this has an easy answer, and
is axiomatically true. But others have doubts, and more
people may have doubts as some easily anticipated
develpoments occur.
- (For example, pedophiles using the much-feared "fortress
crypto," terrorists communicating in unbreakable codes, tza
evaders, etc. Lots of examples.)
- But because some people use crypto to do putatively evil
things, should basic rights be given up? Closed doors can
hide criminal acts, but we don't ban closed doors.
16.11.4. "Aren't there some dangers and risks to letting people pick
and choose their moralities?"
- (Related to questions about group consensus, actions of the
state vs. actions of the individual, and the "herd.)
- Indeed, there are dangers and risks. In the privacy of his
home, my neighbor might be operating a torture dungeon for
young children he captures. But absent real evidence of
this, most nations have not sanctioned the random searches
of private dwellings (not even in the U.S.S.R., so far as I
know).
16.11.5. "As a member of a hated minority (crypto anarchists) I'd
rather take my chances on an open market than risk official
discrimination by the state.....Mercifully, the technology we
are developing will allow everyone who cares to to decline to
participate in this coercive allocation of power." [Duncan
Frissell, 1994-09-08]
16.11.6. "Are there technologies which should be "stopped" even before
they are deployed?"
- Pandora's Box, "things Man was not meant to know," etc.
- It used to be that my answer was mostly a clear "No," with
nuclear and biological weapons as the only clear exception.
But recent events involving key escrow have caused me to
rethink things.
- Imagine a company that's developing home surveillance
cameras...perhaps for burglar prevention, child safety,
etc. Parents can monitor Junior on ceiling-mounted cameras
that can't easily be tampered with or disconnected, without
sending out alarms. All well and good.
- Now imagine that hooks are put into these camera systems to
send the captured images to a central office. Again, not
necessarily a bad idea--vacationers may want their security
company to monitor their houses, etc.
- The danger is that a repressive government could make the
process mandatory....how else to catch sexual deviates,
child molestors, marijuana growers, counterfeiters, and the
like?
- Sound implausible, unacceptable, right? Well, key escrow is
a form of this.
- The Danger. That OS vendors will put these SKE systems in
place without adequate protections against key escrow being
made mandatory at some future date.
16.11.7. "Won't crypto anarchy allow some people to do bad things?"
- Sure, so what else is new? Private rooms allows plotters to
plot their plots. Etc.
- Not to sound too glib, but most of the things we think of
as basic rights allow various illegal, distasteful, or
crummy things to go on. Part of the bargain we make.
- "Of course you could prevent contract killings by requiring
everyone to carry government "escrowed" tape recordings to
record all their conversations and requiring them to keep a
diary at all times alibing their all their activities.
This would also make it much easier to stamp out child
pornography, plutonium smuggling, and social discrimination
against the politically correct." [James Donald, 1994-09-
09]
By Tim May, see README
HTML by Jonathan Rochkind