cryptoanarchy.wiki

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

1996-11-09 - Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?

Header Data

From: snow <snow@smoke.suba.com>
To: ph@netcom.com (Peter Hendrickson)
Message Hash: b29959e1df2f9e2e83078df972684795ce381e856df4744ff9f3d667510fa404
Message ID: <199611090440.WAA00499@smoke.suba.com>
Reply To: <v02140b07aea7f1963f8c@[192.0.2.1]>
UTC Datetime: 1996-11-09 04:38:08 UTC
Raw Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 20:38:08 -0800 (PST)

Raw message

From: snow <snow@smoke.suba.com>
Date: Fri, 8 Nov 1996 20:38:08 -0800 (PST)
To: ph@netcom.com (Peter Hendrickson)
Subject: Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
In-Reply-To: <v02140b07aea7f1963f8c@[192.0.2.1]>
Message-ID: <199611090440.WAA00499@smoke.suba.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> 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.
> 
    I can point to one circumstance which calls your belief into question:

    Prohibition.

    Alcohol was widely seen as a problem by people who didn't use it, and 
social pressures made many people who did use it vote to get rid of it. 

    Other people promptly got rich selling it to those who still wanted it.

    Alcohol is a little more obvious and harder to hide than crypto.


Petro, Christopher C.
petro@suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff>
snow@smoke.suba.com

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