From: Weld Pond <weld@skywriting.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 1997 06:21:17 +0800
To: cypherpunks@Algebra.COM
Subject: 10th aniversary posting
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.971006171543.16998A-100000@skywriting.com>
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FROM CROSSBOWS TO CRYPTOGRAPHY:  TECHNO-THWARTING THE STATE
                               by Chuck Hammill
                              weaponsrus@aol.com

           Given at the Future of Freedom Conference, November 1987
                Public Domain:  Duplicate and Distribute Freely

               You   know,   technology--and   particularly   computer
          technology--has often gotten a bad rap in  Libertarian  cir-
          cles.  We tend to think of Orwell's 1984, or Terry Gilliam's
          Brazil,  or  the  proximity  detectors keeping East Berlin's
          slave/citizens on their own side of the border, or  the  so-
          phisticated  bugging  devices  Nixon used to harass those on
          his "enemies list."  Or, we recognize that for the price  of
          a  ticket  on  the Concorde we can fly at twice the speed of
          sound, but only if we first walk thru a magnetometer run  by
          a  government  policeman, and permit him to paw thru our be-
          longings if it beeps.

               But I think that mind-set is a mistake.   Before  there
          were cattle prods, governments tortured their prisoners with
          clubs  and  rubber  hoses.    Before  there  were lasers for
          eavesdropping, governments used binoculars and  lip-readers.
          Though  government certainly uses technology to oppress, the
          evil lies not in the tools but in the wielder of the tools.

               In fact, technology represents one of the most  promis-
          ing  avenues  available  for  re-capturing our freedoms from
          those who have stolen them.  By its very nature,  it  favors
          the  bright  (who can put it to use) over the dull (who can-
          not).  It favors the adaptable (who are  quick  to  see  the
          merit  of  the  new(  over  the sluggish (who cling to time-
          tested ways).  And what two better words are  there  to  de-
          scribe government bureaucracy than "dull" and "sluggish"?

               One  of  the  clearest,  classic triumphs of technology
          over tyranny I see is  the  invention  of  the  man-portable
          crossbow.   With it, an untrained peasant could now reliably
          and lethally engage a target out to  fifty  meters--even  if
          that  target  were  a mounted, chain-mailed knight.  (Unlike
          the longbow, which, admittedly was more powerful, and  could
          get  off  more shots per unit time, the crossbow required no
          formal training to utilize.   Whereas the  longbow  required
          elaborate  visual,  tactile  and kinesthetic coordination to
          achieve any degree of accuracy, the wielder  of  a  crossbow
          could simply put the weapon to his shoulder, sight along the
          arrow  itself, and be reasonably assured of hitting his tar-
          get.)

               Moreover, since just about  the  only  mounted  knights
          likely  to  visit  your  average peasant would be government
          soldiers and tax collectors, the utility of the  device  was
          plain:    With it, the common rabble could defend themselves
          not only against one another, but against their governmental
          masters.   It was the  medieval  equivalent  of  the  armor-
          piercing  bullet,  and, consequently, kings and priests (the
          medieval equivalent of a  Bureau  of  Alcohol,  Tobacco  and
          Crossbows)  threatened  death  and  excommunication, respec-
          tively, for its unlawful possession.

               Looking at later developments, we  see  how  technology
          like  the  firearm--particularly the repeating rifle and the
          handgun, later followed by the Gatling gun and more advanced
          machine guns--radically altered the balance of interpersonal
          and inter-group power.  Not without reason was the Colt  .45
          called "the equalizer."  A frail dance-hall hostess with one
          in  her  possession  was  now  fully able to protect herself
          against the brawniest roughneck in any saloon.    Advertise-
          ments  for  the period also reflect the merchandising of the
          repeating cartridge  rifle  by  declaring  that  "a  man  on
          horseback,  armed with one of these rifles, simply cannot be
          captured."  And, as long as his captors  were  relying  upon
          flintlocks  or  single-shot rifles, the quote is doubtless a
          true one.

               Updating now to  the  present,  the  public-key  cipher
          (with  a  personal  computer to run it) represents an equiv-
          alent quantum leap--in a defensive weapon.    Not  only  can
          such  a technique be used to protect sensitive data in one's
          own possession, but it can also permit two strangers to  ex-
          change   information   over   an   insecure   communications
          channel--a  wiretapped   phone   line,   for   example,   or
          skywriting, for that matter)--without ever having previously
          met  to  exchange cipher keys.   With a thousand-dollar com-
          puter, you can create a cipher that  a  multi-megabuck  CRAY
          X-MP  can't  crack in a year.  Within a few years, it should
          be economically feasible to similarly encrypt voice communi-
          cations; soon after that, full-color digitized video images.
          Technology will not only have made wiretapping obsolete,  it
          will  have  totally demolished government's control over in-
          formation transfer.

               I'd like to take just a moment to sketch the  mathemat-
          ics  which makes this principle possible.  This algorithm is
          called the RSA algorithm, after Rivest, Shamir, and  Adleman
          who  jointly created it.  Its security derives from the fact
          that, if a very large number is  the  product  of  two  very
          large  primes,  then it is extremely difficult to obtain the
          two prime factors from analysis  of  their  product.    "Ex-
          tremely"  in  the  sense that if primes  p  and  q  have 100
          digits apiece, then their 200-digit product cannot  in  gen-
          eral be factored in less than 100 years by the most powerful
          computer now in existence.

               The  "public" part of the key consists of (1) the prod-
          uct  pq  of the two large primes p and q, and (2)  one  fac-
          tor,  call it  x  , of the product  xy  where  xy = {(p-1) *
          (q-1) + 1}.  The "private" part of the key consists  of  the
          other factor  y.

               Each  block of the text to be encrypted is first turned
          into an integer--either by using ASCII,  or  even  a  simple
          A=01,  B=02,  C=03, ... , Z=26 representation.  This integer
          is then raised to the power  x (modulo pq) and the resulting
          integer is then sent as the encrypted message.  The receiver
          decrypts by taking this integer to the  (secret)  power    y
          (modulo  pq).  It can be shown that this process will always
          yield the original number started with.

               What makes this a groundbreaking development,  and  why
          it  is  called  "public-key"  cryptography,"  is  that I can
          openly publish the product  pq and the number   x   ,  while
          keeping  secret  the number  y  --so that anyone can send me
          an encrypted message, namely
                               x
                             a    (mod pq)  ,
          but only I can recover the original message  a  , by  taking
          what  they  send, raising it to the power  y  and taking the
          result (mod pq).  The risky step (meeting to exchange cipher
          keys) has been eliminated.  So people who may not even trust
          each other enough to want to meet, may  still  reliably  ex-
          change  encrypted  messages--each  party having selected and
          disseminated his own  pq  and his  x  ,   while  maintaining
          the secrecy of his own  y  .

               Another benefit of this scheme is the notion of a "dig-
          ital signature," to enable one to authenticate the source of
          a given message.  Normally, if I want to send you a message,
          I raise my plaintext  a  to your x and take the result  (mod
          your pq)  and send that.

              However,  if in my message, I take the plaintext  a and
          raise it to my (secret) power  y  , take the result  (mod my
          pq), then raise that result to your x   (mod  your  pq)  and
          send this, then even after you have normally "decrypted" the
          message,  it  will still look like garbage.  However, if you
          then raise it to my public power x   , and take  the  result
          (mod  my public pq  ), so you will not only recover the ori-
          ginal plaintext message, but you will know that no one but I
          could have sent it to you (since no one else knows my secret
          y  ).

               And these are the very concerns by the way that are to-
          day tormenting the Soviet Union about the whole question  of
          personal  computers.    On the one hand, they recognize that
          American schoolchildren are right now growing up  with  com-
          puters  as commonplace as sliderules used to be--more so, in
          fact, because there are things computers can do  which  will
          interest  (and instruct) 3- and 4-year-olds.  And it is pre-
          cisely these students who one generation hence will be going
          head-to-head against their Soviet  counterparts.    For  the
          Soviets  to  hold  back might be a suicidal as continuing to
          teach swordsmanship  while  your  adversaries  are  learning
          ballistics.    On  the  other hand, whatever else a personal
          computer may be, it is also an exquisitely efficient copying
          machine--a floppy disk will hold upwards of 50,000 words  of
          text,  and  can  be  copied in a couple of minutes.  If this
          weren't threatening enough, the computer that  performs  the
          copy  can also encrypt the data in a fashion that is all but
          unbreakable.  Remember that in Soviet society  publicly  ac-
          cessible  Xerox  machines are unknown.   (The relatively few
          copying machines in existence  are  controlled  more  inten-
          sively than machine guns are in the United States.)

               Now  the  "conservative" position is that we should not
          sell these computers to the Soviets, because they could  use
          them  in weapons systems.  The "liberal" position is that we
          should sell them, in  the  interests  of  mutual  trade  and
          cooperation--and  anyway,  if  we don't make the sale, there
          will certainly be some other nation willing to.

               For my part, I'm ready to suggest that the  Libertarian
          position should be to give them to the Soviets for free, and
          if  necessary, make them take them . . . and if that doesn't
          work load up an SR-71  Blackbird  and  air  drop  them  over
          Moscow in the middle of the night.  Paid for by private sub-
          scription, of course, not taxation . . . I confess that this
          is not a position that has gained much support among members
          of  the conventional left-right political spectrum, but, af-
          ter all, in the words of one of Illuminatus's characters, we
          are political non-Euclideans:   The shortest distance  to  a
          particular  goal may not look anything like what most people
          would consider a "straight line."    Taking  a  long  enough
          world-view,  it is arguable that breaking the Soviet govern-
          ment monopoly on information transfer could better  lead  to
          the enfeeblement and, indeed, to the ultimate dissolution of
          the Soviet empire than would the production of another dozen
          missiles aimed at Moscow.

               But  there's  the rub:  A "long enough" world view does
          suggest that the evil, the oppressive, the coercive and  the
          simply  stupid  will "get what they deserve," but what's not
          immediately clear is how the rest of  us  can  escape  being
          killed, enslaved, or pauperized in the process.

              When  the  liberals and other collectivists began to at-
          tack freedom, they possessed a reasonably  stable,  healthy,
          functioning economy, and almost unlimited time to proceed to
          hamstring   and   dismantle  it.    A  policy  of  political
          gradualism was at least  conceivable.    But  now,  we  have
          patchwork  crazy-quilt  economy held together by baling wire
          and spit.  The state not only taxes us to  "feed  the  poor"
          while also inducing farmers to slaughter milk cows and drive
          up food prices--it then simultaneously turns around and sub-
          sidizes research into agricultural chemicals designed to in-
          crease  yields of milk from the cows left alive.  Or witness
          the fact that a decline in the price of oil is considered as
          potentially frightening as a comparable increase a few years
          ago.  When the price went up,  we  were  told,  the  economy
          risked  collapse for for want of energy.  The price increase
          was called the "moral equivalent of war" and the Feds  swung
          into  action.    For the first time in American history, the
          speed at which you drive your car to work in the morning be-
          came an issue of Federal concern.   Now, when the  price  of
          oil  drops, again we risk problems, this time because Ameri-
          can oil companies and Third World  basket-case  nations  who
          sell  oil  may  not  be  able to ever pay their debts to our
          grossly over-extended banks.  The suggested panacea is  that
          government  should now re-raise the oil prices that OPEC has
          lowered, via a new oil tax.  Since the government is seeking
          to raise oil prices to about the same extent  as  OPEC  did,
          what  can we call this except the "moral equivalent of civil
          war--the government against its own people?"

               And, classically, in international trade, can you imag-
          ine any entity in the world except  a  government  going  to
          court  claiming  that  a  vendor  was  selling  it goods too
          cheaply and demanding not only that that naughty  vendor  be
          compelled by the court to raise its prices, but also that it
          be punished for the act of lowering them in the first place?

               So  while the statists could afford to take a couple of
          hundred years to trash our  economy  and  our  liberties--we
          certainly  cannot  count  on  having an equivalent period of
          stability in which to reclaim them.   I contend  that  there
          exists  almost  a  "black  hole"  effect in the evolution of
          nation-states just as in the evolution of stars.  Once free-
          dom contracts beyond a certain  minimum  extent,  the  state
          warps  the fabric of the political continuum about itself to
          the degree that subsequent re-emergence of  freedom  becomes
          all but impossible.  A good illustration of this can be seen
          in the area of so-called "welfare" payments.  When those who
          sup  at the public trough outnumber (and thus outvote) those
          whose taxes must replenish the trough,  then  what  possible
          choice has a democracy but to perpetuate and expand the tak-
          ing  from  the few for the unearned benefit of the many?  Go
          down to the nearest "welfare" office, find just  two  people
          on  the dole . . . and recognize that between them they form
          a voting bloc that can forever outvote you on  the  question
          of who owns your life--and the fruits of your life's labor.

               So essentially those who love liberty need an "edge" of
          some  sort  if  we're ultimately going to prevail.  We obvi-
          ously  can't  use  the  altruists'  "other-directedness"  of
          "work,  slave, suffer, sacrifice, so that next generation of
          a billion random strangers can  live  in  a  better  world."
          Recognize  that, however immoral such an appeal might be, it
          is nonetheless an extremely powerful one in today's culture.
          If you can convince  people  to  work  energetically  for  a
          "cause," caring only enough for their personal welfare so as
          to  remain  alive  enough  and  healthy  enough  to continue
          working--then you have a truly massive reservoir  of  energy
          to draw from.  Equally clearly, this is just the sort of ap-
          peal which tautologically cannot be utilized for egoistic or
          libertarian goals.  If I were to stand up before you tonight
          and say something like, "Listen, follow me as I enunciate my
          noble "cause," contribute your money to support the "cause,"
          give  up  your  free  time  to  work for the "cause," strive
          selflessly to bring it about, and then (after you  and  your
          children are dead) maybe your children's children will actu-
          ally  live under egoism"--you'd all think I'd gone mad.  And
          of course you'd be right.  Because the point I'm  trying  to
          make is that libertarianism and/or egoism will be spread if,
          when, and as, individual libertarians and/or egoists find it
          profitable and/or enjoyable to do so.    And  probably  only
          then.

               While I certainly do not disparage the concept of poli-
          tical  action, I don't believe that it is the only, nor even
          necessarily the most cost-effective path  toward  increasing
          freedom  in  our time.  Consider that, for a fraction of the
          investment in time, money and effort I might expend in  try-
          ing  to  convince  the  state to abolish wiretapping and all
          forms of censorship--I can teach every libertarian who's in-
          terested  how  to   use   cryptography   to   abolish   them
          unilaterally.

               There  is  a  maxim--a proverb--generally attributed to
          the Eskimoes, which very likely most Libertarians  have  al-
          ready  heard.    And while you likely would not quarrel with
          the saying, you might well feel that you've heard  it  often
          enough already, and that it has nothing further to teach us,
          and moreover, that maybe you're even tired of hearing it.  I
          shall therefore repeat it now:

               If you give a man a fish, the saying runs, you feed him
          for a day.  But if you teach a man how to fish, you feed him
          for a lifetime.

               Your exposure to the quote was probably in some sort of
          a  "workfare"  vs.  "welfare"  context;  namely, that if you
          genuinely wish to help someone in need, you should teach him
          how to earn his sustenance, not simply how to  beg  for  it.
          And of course this is true, if only because the next time he
          is hungry, there might not be anybody around willing or even
          able to give him a fish, whereas with the information on how
          to fish, he is completely self sufficient.

               But  I  submit  that this exhausts only the first order
          content of the quote, and if there were nothing  further  to
          glean  from  it,  I would have wasted your time by citing it
          again.  After all, it seems to have almost a crypto-altruist
          slant, as though to imply that we should structure  our  ac-
          tivities  so  as  to  maximize  the  benefits to such hungry
          beggars as we may encounter.

               But consider:

               Suppose this Eskimo doesn't know how to  fish,  but  he
          does  know  how  to hunt walruses.   You, on the other hand,
          have often gone hungry while traveling thru  walrus  country
          because  you  had  no idea how to catch the damn things, and
          they ate most of the fish you could catch.  And now  suppose
          the  two  of  you  decide to exchange information, bartering
          fishing knowledge for hunting knowledge.   Well,  the  first
          thing  to  observe  is  that  a  transaction  of  this  type
          categorically and unambiguously refutes the Marxist  premise
          that  every  trade  must  have a "winner" and a "loser;" the
          idea that if one person gains, it must necessarily be at the
          "expense" of another person who loses.  Clearly, under  this
          scenario, such is not the case.  Each party has gained some-
          thing  he  did  not have before, and neither has been dimin-
          ished in any way.  When it comes to exchange of  information
          (rather  than material objects) life is no longer a zero-sum
          game.  This is an extremely powerful notion.   The  "law  of
          diminishing   returns,"   the  "first  and  second  laws  of
          thermodynamics"--all those "laws" which constrain our possi-
          bilities in other contexts--no longer bind us!   Now  that's
          anarchy!

               Or  consider  another possibility:  Suppose this hungry
          Eskimo never learned  to  fish  because  the  ruler  of  his
          nation-state    had  decreed fishing illegal.   Because fish
          contain dangerous tiny bones, and sometimes sharp spines, he
          tells us, the state has decreed that their  consumption--and
          even  their  possession--are  too  hazardous to the people's
          health to be permitted . . . even by knowledgeable,  willing
          adults.   Perhaps it is because citizens' bodies are thought
          to be government property, and therefore it is the  function
          of the state to punish those who improperly care for govern-
          ment  property.    Or perhaps it is because the state gener-
          ously extends to competent adults the "benefits" it provides
          to children and to the mentally ill:  namely,  a  full-time,
          all-pervasive supervisory conservatorship--so that they need
          not  trouble  themselves  with making choices about behavior
          thought physically risky or morally "naughty."  But, in  any
          case,  you  stare stupefied, while your Eskimo informant re-
          lates how this law is taken so seriously that  a  friend  of
          his was recently imprisoned for years for the crime of "pos-
          session of nine ounces of trout with intent to distribute."

               Now  you  may  conclude  that  a society so grotesquely
          oppressive as to enforce a law of this  type  is  simply  an
          affront to the dignity of all human beings.  You may go far-
          ther  and  decide to commit some portion of your discretion-
          ary, recreational time specifically to the task of thwarting
          this tyrant's goal.  (Your rationale may be "altruistic"  in
          the   sense   of  wanting  to  liberate  the  oppressed,  or
          "egoistic" in the sense of  proving  you  can  outsmart  the
          oppressor--or  very likely some combination of these or per-
          haps even other motives.)

               But, since you have zero desire to become a  martyr  to
          your "cause," you're not about to mount a military campaign,
          or  even try to run a boatload of fish through the blockade.
          However, it is here that technology--and in  particular  in-
          formation technology--can multiply your efficacy literally a
          hundredfold.    I say "literally," because for a fraction of
          the effort (and virtually none of  the  risk)  attendant  to
          smuggling in a hundred fish, you can quite readily produce a
          hundred  Xerox copies of fishing instructions.  (If the tar-
          geted government, like present-day America, at least permits
          open  discussion  of  topics  whose  implementation  is  re-
          stricted,  then that should suffice.  But, if the government
          attempts to suppress the flow of information as  well,  then
          you will have to take a little more effort and perhaps write
          your  fishing manual on a floppy disk encrypted according to
          your mythical Eskimo's public-key parameters.  But as far as
          increasing real-world access to fish you have  made  genuine
          nonzero  headway--which  may  continue to snowball as others
          re-disseminate the information you have provided.   And  you
          have not had to waste any of your time trying to convert id-
          eological  adversaries, or even trying to win over the unde-
          cided.  Recall Harry Browne's dictum  from  "Freedom  in  an
          Unfree World" that the success of any endeavor is in general
          inversely proportional to the number of people whose persua-
          sion is necessary to its fulfilment.

               If  you  look  at  history, you cannot deny that it has
          been dramatically shaped by men with names like  Washington,
          Lincoln,  .  .  .  Nixon  .  . . Marcos . . . Duvalier . . .
          Khadaffi . . .  and their ilk.  But it has also been  shaped
          by  people with names like Edison, Curie, Marconi, Tesla and
          Wozniak.  And this latter shaping has been at least as  per-
          vasive, and not nearly so bloody.

               And  that's  where  I'm  trying  to  take The LiberTech
          Project.  Rather than beseeching the state to please not en-
          slave, plunder or constrain us, I propose a libertarian net-
          work spreading  the  technologies  by  which  we  may  seize
          freedom for ourselves.

               But here we must be a bit careful.  While it is not (at
          present)  illegal  to  encrypt  information  when government
          wants to spy on you, there is no guarantee of what  the  fu-
          ture  may hold.  There have been bills introduced, for exam-
          ple, which would have made it a crime  to  wear  body  armor
          when government wants to shoot you.  That is, if you were to
          commit certain crimes while wearing a Kevlar vest, then that
          fact  would  constitute a separate federal crime of its own.
          This law to my knowledge has not passed . . . yet . . .  but
          it does indicate how government thinks.

               Other  technological  applications,  however, do indeed
          pose legal risks.  We recognize, for  example,  that  anyone
          who  helped a pre-Civil War slave escape on the "underground
          railroad" was making a clearly illegal use of technology--as
          the sovereign government of the United States of America  at
          that time found the buying and selling of human beings quite
          as  acceptable  as  the buying and selling of cattle.  Simi-
          larly, during Prohibition, anyone who used  his  bathtub  to
          ferment  yeast and sugar into the illegal psychoactive drug,
          alcohol--the controlled substance, wine--was using  technol-
          ogy  in a way that could get him shot dead by federal agents
          for his "crime"--unfortunately not to be  restored  to  life
          when  Congress  reversed itself and re-permitted use of this
          drug.

               So . . . to quote a former President,  un-indicted  co-
          conspirator  and pardoned felon . . . "Let me make one thing
          perfectly clear:"  The LiberTech Project does not  advocate,
          participate  in, or conspire in the violation of any law--no
          matter how oppressive,  unconstitutional  or  simply  stupid
          such  law may be.  It does engage in description (for educa-
          tional and informational  purposes  only)  of  technological
          processes,  and some of these processes (like flying a plane
          or manufacturing a firearm) may well require appropriate li-
          censing to perform legally.    Fortunately,  no  license  is
          needed  for  the  distribution or receipt of information it-
          self.

               So, the next time you look at the political  scene  and
          despair,  thinking,  "Well,  if 51% of the nation and 51% of
          this State, and 51% of this city have  to  turn  Libertarian
          before  I'll  be  free,  then  somebody might as well cut my
          goddamn throat now, and put me out of my  misery"--recognize
          that  such  is not the case.  There exist ways to make your-
          self free.

               If you wish to explore such techniques via the Project,
          you are welcome to give me your name and address--or a  fake
          name  and  mail  drop, for that matter--and you'll go on the
          mailing list for my erratically-published newsletter.    Any
          friends  or acquaintances whom you think would be interested
          are welcome as well.  I'm not even asking for stamped  self-
          addressed envelopes, since my printer can handle mailing la-
          bels and actual postage costs are down in the noise compared
          with  the  other  efforts  in getting an issue out.   If you
          should have an idea to share, or even a  useful  product  to
          plug,  I'll be glad to have you write it up for publication.
          Even if you want to be the proverbial "free rider" and  just
          benefit  from  what others contribute--you're still welcome:
          Everything will be public domain; feel free to  copy  it  or
          give it away (or sell it, for that matter, 'cause if you can
          get  money  for  it while I'm taking full-page ads trying to
          give it away, you're certainly entitled to  your  capitalist
          profit . . .)  Anyway, every application of these principles
          should make the world just a little freer, and I'm certainly
          willing to underwrite that, at least for the forseeable  fu-
          ture.

               I  will leave you with one final thought:  If you don't
          learn how to beat your plowshares into  swords  before  they
          outlaw  swords,  then you sure as HELL ought to learn before
          they outlaw plowshares too.

                                                       --Chuck Hammill

                                                 THE LIBERTECH PROJECT