cryptoanarchy.wiki

Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!

1996-11-07 - Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?

Header Data

From: “Daniel T. Hagan” <dhagan@vt.edu>
To: Peter Hendrickson <ph@netcom.com>
Message Hash: f334ae3dd3d43789ec5c3ae2e9fe253d2215e0589b390c1fce1a8423919d0041
Message ID: <Pine.OSF.3.95.961107154908.14910A-100000@rottweiler.cslab.vt.edu>
Reply To: <v02140b07aea7f1963f8c@[192.0.2.1]>
UTC Datetime: 1996-11-07 20:50:55 UTC
Raw Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 12:50:55 -0800 (PST)

Raw message

From: "Daniel T. Hagan" <dhagan@vt.edu>
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 12:50:55 -0800 (PST)
To: Peter Hendrickson <ph@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
In-Reply-To: <v02140b07aea7f1963f8c@[192.0.2.1]>
Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.3.95.961107154908.14910A-100000@rottweiler.cslab.vt.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Thu, 7 Nov 1996, Peter Hendrickson wrote:

> It appears to be widely believed that cryptoanarchy is irreversible.
> Everybody believes that the race to deploy or forbid strong cryptography
> will define the outcome for a long time.
> 
> I can't think of a reason why this should be so.
> 
> If the wide use of strong cryptography results in widely unpopular
> activities such as sarin attacks and political assassinations, it
> would not be all that hard to forbid it, even after deployment.
> 
> I am curious why many people believe this is not true.
> 
> Peter Hendrickson
> ph@netcom.com

If I understand the reasoning, people beleive it is easier to prevent the
release of strong crypto. techiniques than to remove them once they are
released.  

Once a terrorist has strong crypto, why should they stop using it if it
becomes illegal?

Daniel

---
Daniel Hagan                 http://acm.vt.edu/~dhagan                CS Major 
dhagan@vt.edu 	       http://acm.vt.edu/~dhagan/PGPkey.html     Virginia Tech
     Key fingerprint =  DB 18 30 0A E1 69 7E 51  E2 14 E3 E3 1C AE 69 97

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