From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 01:55:36 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: The War is Underway
In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19970510003251.006c7650@cnw.com>
Message-ID: <v0300780baf9a702c49fe@[207.167.93.63]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 9:07 AM -0800 5/10/97, frissell@panix.com wrote:
>At 12:35 AM 5/10/97 -0700, Blanc wrote:
>>Timothy must be drunk; I can't believe he said this.   Because he wouldn't
>>spend so much time writing sensible things of Truth & Light, if he thought
>>the better thing to do for achieving libertarian values was to kill so
>>indiscriminately with a bomb.    After all, he subscribes to utmost
>>discrimination.   So I think right now he's less in the engagement of
>>Reason and more under the influence of maybe some Bud Light.
>
>He didn't say it was a better thing to do.  He said he was coming to
>understand McVeigh's actions.
>

Exactly.

>It is important that everyone from the uninvolved on up to the ruling
>classes understand that we are reaching a point where laws won't "work"
>anymore because power is devolving down the heirarching to the fundamental
>organizational unit -- the individual.  If two guys with $2K to spend can
>take out a building or someone else with ten minutes to spend and a Net
>connection can render export controls ineffective then power relationships
>have changed.
>
>The faster our "rulers" and their "ruled" understand this, the lower the
>total body count.  They simply don't have the power any more.  It's gone.

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, as
laws are being generated by the 50 states, the various municipalities, and,
of course, the Feds. Even the lawmakers can't explain what their laws will
mean, or who will be prosecuted, or how many new prisons will have to be
built to handle the new felons.

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, with citizen-units using
approved crypto with approved government backdoors, escrow of diaries, and
random searches under flimsy pretexts. At the other side lies crypto
anarchy, with free men and women arranging the economic and social
transactions they wish, using unbreakable crypto to communicate across
nominal national borders and without only disdain for local attempts to
control such communications.

Many of us believe crypto anarchy will win out, and governments will be
undermined in various ways (including forcibly, using the new degrees of
freedom to deploy destructive technologies...hence my "avoid soft targets"
line).

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.


--Tim May

There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws.
Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!"
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."