From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 07:08:38 +0800
To: William Knowles <adam@homeport.org>
Subject: Re: (eternity) autonomous agents
In-Reply-To: <199801132039.PAA14695@homeport.org>
Message-ID: <v03102804b0e1a0b6d21b@[207.167.93.63]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 1:23 PM -0800 1/13/98, William Knowles wrote:

>Anguilla seems to be a doing agood job on becoming a country
>willing on hosting data havens.

Oh yeah?

It's been a while since we talked about this (at least on the Cypherpunks
list), but a couple of years ago there was much discusson on the CP list
about just what items would be allowable in Anguilla. Vince Cate gave his
assessment, which I found fairly nebulous, in that it appeared the Ruling
Families would allow what they would allow, and not allow what they would
not allow---there seemed to be a lot of ad hoc rulings.

(Given that copies of "Penthouse" are illegal in Anguilla, if I recall this
correctly, and given that gun are illegal, and drugs are illegal, I rather
doubt that Anguilla would happily host "The Aryan Nations Bomb Site," or
"Pedophile Heaven," or "Gun Smuggler's Digest. " Or the even juicier stuff
any "data haven" with any claim to really being a data haven will surely
have.)

>And there are likely under a hundred oil companies looking
>for firms to 'recycle' their old oil platforms and drilling
>rigs wasting away around the world, I'm sure some might just
>give you one just to be rid of future liability.

Given the willingness of the French to have SDECE sink Greenpeace ships in
neutral ports, how long before a couple of kilos of Semtex are applied to
the underside of these oil rigs?

Given what happened with "pirate broadcast tankers," the future is not bright.

When the first "oil rig data haven" is found to have kiddie porn,
bomb-making info, and (shudder) material doubting the historicity of the
Holocaust, the U.N. will cluck and the public will cheer when it is boarded
and seized, or simply sunk.

As I said in my last piece on this subject, there is no security in
meatspace comparable to what is gotten with mathematics.

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."