From: Alex Strasheim <cp@proust.suba.com>
Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 04:05:18 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Degrees of Freedom
In-Reply-To: <ad3f7f9514021004b24f@[205.199.118.202]>
Message-ID: <199602081933.NAA01579@proust.suba.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


Tim May said:

> The Chinese want a Bamboo Curtain, the Muslims want a Veiled Curtain, the
> Jews want a Wailing Wall, and the Germans wanted barbed wire. It ain't
> gonna work.

If you think in terms of content, you're right -- they all want different
and contradictory things.  But from another persepctive, they're all in
agreement:  they want to preserve their ability to censor and filter 
information and ideas, and they want to hold people accountable for 
writing and saying things which are forbidden.

The headers I clipped off of Tim's post might not be as farfetched as 
they seem at first.  What if they built a central storehouse of technical 
information that's accessible to all, transactional systems that 
facilitate international trade between member states, and left cultural 
and political content to the tyrants of the respective nations?  
Everyone's can grab mechanical engineering info, and evryone can buy 
shoes from China, but Islamic users will have to rely on Islamic sources 
for world news and political commentary.  Differences in human languages 
are going to make the tyrants' job a lot easier -- how many Chineese 
speak Arabic?

They won't have to monitor each piece of data to affix attributes for
every petty jurisdiction.  All they'll need is a core of bland utilitarian
information that's open to all -- each country can produce and consume
whatever information it sees fit domestically.  And if everything is
verified with state issued digital signatures, anyone who steps over the
line can be imprisoned, tortured, or killed.

Suppose I'm an electrical engineer in Iraq.  I could have access to
non-political technical information that might be generated in China, and
I could buy chips produced in an Asian dictatorship online.  I can post to
technical groups, and what I write will be available to electrical
engineers all over the world.  I can post to religious/poltical groups,
and what I write will only be available to those in the Islamic world.  In
both cases, my signature is affixed to whatever I write, and I can be held
accountable.  The rules for the forums are different -- I can't say
anything about Islam in the electrical engineering group.  If I do, I'll
be punished.  But the same content would be perfectly acceptable in
another group that only goes out to the Islamic world.

I don't disagree that eventually such a plan will fail.  But centrally
planned economies competing with market driven ones will eventually fail
as well, and that didn't stop communism from casting a long dark shadow
over the second half of the century.  Is a laissez-faire response based on
an extremely promising but still untested analysis (ie., crypto anarchy)
prudent?

> >We ought to speak out against this Chineese net, and start asking
> >questions about Western companies that are collaborating in its
> >construction.
> 
> The usual suspects: SAIC, Wackenhut, NewsCorp, etc.

What about companies with better images?  Like Sun, RSA, etc?  (I seem to 
remember reading that Sun was selling some hardware -- but my memory 
isn't good, and I could very well be wrong.)