From: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 05:25:38 +0800
To: tcmay@got.net
Subject: Re: The War is Underway
In-Reply-To: <v0300780baf9a702c49fe@[207.167.93.63]>
Message-ID: <199705101907.UAA01415@server.test.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Tim May <tcmay@got.net> writes:
> However, while we may think their power is gone, or is almost gone, they
> think otherwise. And we're seeing an accelerating pace of lawmaking, [...]
> 
> This is the "race to the fork in the road" I have long talked
> about. The future will be pulled between two attractors, with
> essentially no middle ground (just as there is no middle ground in
> cryptographic security, like pregnancy). At one side lies a
> surveillance state, [...] At the other side lies crypto anarchy,
> [...]
>
> The bureacrats believe more and more repressive laws will control
> troublemakers.
> 
> Who will actually win?
> 
> I think we will. They think they will. The war is underway.

So what are we doing to fight our side?  (Apart from fantasizing
about nuking the bastards till they glow :-)

They seem to be able to keep many people busy just reacting to the
stupid laws and proposed laws.  They can propose laws pretty fast
whilst on their all expenses paid (by us) corrupt political games.
Whoring to corporate and intelligence special interests, and power
grabbing for job security as the malignant growth that is government
heads towards > 50% body mass.

So their tactic seems to be to bring out laws at an accelerating rate.
And to send the crypto facist Aaron around bullying other countries.
If some of these laws actually pass, we're in deep shit.  They're
actually talking about restricting imports, making it a crime to use
crypto, mandatory key escrow (US, Clipper XXIII, I've lost count),
licenses for encryption services (UK, TTPs).  Somehow I don't think
SAFE will pass (either with or without the crypto crime clause), if
anything does get passed it will be so perverted as to be hugely
negative for our purposes.  Maybe some of the draconian stuff is not
expected to stand a chance of passing and is just there for bargaining
purposes.  Regardless, we can't expect any favours from laws, or
politicians.

So what can cypherpunks do?

Write code?

Perhaps it's time for some stego interfaces to remailers.

Usually around this time Black Unicorn gives us his wish list of
crypto anarchy apps.  I'm not sure we've progressed much towards his
wish list since the last time he posted it.

I thought the Eternity Service I announced a week or so ago was a step
towards reducing the possibility for government censorship of web pages.
(http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/eternity/) Not much interest to date.
Ideas stand on their merit, but the success of crypto anarchy services
also depends on ease of use, funding, volunteer effort, publicity, and
evangelizing.  I haven't done much of the latter yet lacking an
example server to bootstrap the system, I hope to have this up in a
few weeks.

Adam
-- 
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<>
)]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`