Dr Washington Sanchez
parent
03f666a902
commit
6a0494c461
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,766 @@
|
|||
17. The Future
|
||||
|
||||
17.1. copyright
|
||||
THE CYPHERNOMICON: Cypherpunks FAQ and More, Version 0.666,
|
||||
1994-09-10, Copyright Timothy C. May. All rights reserved.
|
||||
See the detailed disclaimer. Use short sections under "fair
|
||||
use" provisions, with appropriate credit, but don't put your
|
||||
name on my words.
|
||||
|
||||
17.2. SUMMARY: The Future
|
||||
17.2.1. Main Points
|
||||
- where things are probably going
|
||||
17.2.2. Connections to Other Sections
|
||||
17.2.3. Where to Find Additional Information
|
||||
17.2.4. Miscellaneous Comments
|
||||
|
||||
17.3. Progress Needed
|
||||
17.3.1. "Why have most of the things Cypherpunks talk about *not*
|
||||
happened?"
|
||||
+ Except for remailers and basic crypto, few of the main
|
||||
ideas talked about for so long have actually seen any kind
|
||||
of realization. There are many reasons:
|
||||
A. Difficult to achieve. Both Karl Kleinpaste and Eric
|
||||
Hughes implemented simple first-generation remailers in a
|
||||
matter of _days_, but "digital cash" and "aptical
|
||||
foddering," for example, are not quite so
|
||||
straightforward. (I am of course not taking anything away
|
||||
from Kleinpaste, Hughes, Helsingius, Finney, etc., just
|
||||
noting that redirecting mail messages--and even
|
||||
implementing PGP and things like delay, batching, etc.,
|
||||
into remailers--is a lot easier conceptually than DC-Nets
|
||||
and the like.
|
||||
B. Protocols are confusing, tough to implement. Only a tiny
|
||||
fraction of the "crypto primitives" discussed at Crypto
|
||||
Conferences, or in the various crypto books, have been
|
||||
realized as runnable code. Building blocks like "bit
|
||||
commitment" have not even--to my knowledge--been
|
||||
adequately realized as reusable code. (Certainly various
|
||||
groups, such as Chaum's, have cobbled-together things
|
||||
like bit commitment....I just don't think there's a
|
||||
consensus as to the form, and this has limited the
|
||||
ability of nonspecialists to use these "objects.")
|
||||
C. Semantic confusion as well. While it's fairly clear what
|
||||
"encrypting" or "remailing" means, just what is a
|
||||
"digital bank"? Or a "reputation server"?
|
||||
D. Interoperablity is problematic. Many platforms, many
|
||||
operating systems, many languages. Again, remailers and
|
||||
encryption work because there is a de facto lowest common
|
||||
denominator for them: the simple text block, used in e-
|
||||
mail, editors, input and output from programs, etc. That
|
||||
is, we all mostly know exactly what an ASCII text block
|
||||
is, and crypto programs are expected to know how to
|
||||
access and manipulate such blocks. This largely explains
|
||||
the success of PGP across many platforms--text blocks are
|
||||
the basic element. Ditto for Cypherpunks remialers, which
|
||||
operate on the text blocks found in most mail systems.
|
||||
The situation becomes much murkier for things like
|
||||
digital money, which are not standalone objects and are
|
||||
often multi-party protocols involving time delays,
|
||||
offline processing, etc.
|
||||
E. Lack of an economic motive. We on this list are not being
|
||||
paid to develop anything, are not assisted by anyone, and
|
||||
don't have the financial backing of corporations to
|
||||
assist us. Since much of today's "software development"
|
||||
is actually _deal-making_ and _standards negotiation_, we
|
||||
are left out of lots of things.
|
||||
|
||||
17.4. Future Directions
|
||||
17.4.1. "What are some future directions?"
|
||||
17.4.2. The Future of the List
|
||||
+ "What can be done about these situations?"
|
||||
- That is, given that the Cypherpunks list often contains
|
||||
sensitive material (see above), and given that the
|
||||
current membership list can be accessed by..... what can
|
||||
be done?
|
||||
- Move central server to non-U.S. locale
|
||||
- Or to "cyberspace" (distributed network, with no central
|
||||
server...like FidoNet)
|
||||
- subscribers can use pseudonyms, cutouts, remailers
|
||||
17.4.3. What if encryption is outlawed?
|
||||
- can uuencode (and similar), to at least slow down the
|
||||
filter programs a bit (this is barely security through
|
||||
obscurity, but....)
|
||||
- underground movements?
|
||||
- will Cypherpunks be rounded up?
|
||||
17.4.4. "Should Cypherpunks be more organized, more like the CPSR,
|
||||
EFF, and EPIC?"
|
||||
- Those groups largely are lobbying groups, with a staff in
|
||||
Washington supported by the membership donations of
|
||||
thousands or tens of thousands of dues-paying members. They
|
||||
perform a valuable service, of course.
|
||||
- But that is not our model, nor can it plausibly be. We were
|
||||
formed as an ad hoc group to explore crypto, were dubbed
|
||||
"Cypherpunks," and have since acted as a techno-grasssroots
|
||||
anarchy. No staff, no dues, no elections, no official rules
|
||||
and regulations, and no leadership beyond what is provided
|
||||
by the power of speech (and a slight amount of "final say"
|
||||
provided by the list maintainer Eric Hughes and the machine
|
||||
owner, John Gilmore, with support from Hugh Daniel).
|
||||
- If folks want a lobbying group, with lawyers in Washington,
|
||||
they should join the EFF and/or CPSR.
|
||||
- And we fill a niche they don't try to fill.
|
||||
17.4.5. Difficult to Set Directions
|
||||
- an anarchy...no centralized control
|
||||
- emergent interests
|
||||
- everyone has some axe to grind, some temporary set of
|
||||
priorities
|
||||
- little economic motivation (and most have other jobs)
|
||||
17.4.6. The Heart and Soul of Cypherpunks?
|
||||
+ Competing Goals:
|
||||
+ Personal Privacy
|
||||
- PGP, integration with mailers
|
||||
- education
|
||||
+ Reducing the Power of Institutions
|
||||
- whistelblowers group
|
||||
-
|
||||
- Crypto Anarchy
|
||||
+ Common Purposes
|
||||
+ Spreading strong crypto tools and knowledge
|
||||
- PGP
|
||||
+ Fighting government restrictions and regulations
|
||||
- Clipper/Skipjack fight was a unifying experience
|
||||
+ Exploring new directions in cryptology
|
||||
- digital mixes, digital cash, voting
|
||||
17.4.7. Possible Directions
|
||||
+ Crypto Tools...make them ubiquitous "enough" so that the
|
||||
genie cannot be put back in the bottle
|
||||
- can worry about the politics later (socialists vs.
|
||||
anarchocapitalists, etc.) (Although socialists would do
|
||||
well to carefully think about the implications of
|
||||
untraceable communications, digital cash, and world-wide
|
||||
networks of consultants and workers--and what this does
|
||||
to tax collection and social spending programs--before
|
||||
they work with the libertarians and anarchocapitalists to
|
||||
bring on the Crypto Millenium.)
|
||||
+ Education
|
||||
- educating the masses about crypto
|
||||
- public forums
|
||||
- this was picked by the Cambridge/MIT group as their
|
||||
special interest
|
||||
+ Lobbying
|
||||
- talking to Congressional aides and committee staffers,
|
||||
attending hearings, submitting briefs on proposed
|
||||
legislation
|
||||
- coordinating with EFF, CPSR, ACLU, etc.
|
||||
- this was picked by the Washington group as their special
|
||||
interest, which is compellingly appropriate (Calif. group
|
||||
is simply too far away)
|
||||
- Legal Challenges
|
||||
+ mixture of legal and illegal
|
||||
- use legal tools, and illegal tools
|
||||
- fallback positions
|
||||
- enlist illegal users as customers...help it spread in
|
||||
these channels (shown to be almost uncontrollable)
|
||||
17.4.8. Goals (as I see them)
|
||||
+ Get strong crypto deployed in such a way as to be
|
||||
unstoppable, unrecallable
|
||||
- "fire and forget" crypto
|
||||
- genie out of the bottle
|
||||
- Note that this does _not_ necessarily that crypto be
|
||||
_widely_ deployed, though that's generally a good idea.
|
||||
It may mean seeding key sites outside the U.S. with
|
||||
strong crypto tools, with remailers, and with the other
|
||||
acouterments.
|
||||
+ Monkeywrench threats to crypto freedom.
|
||||
- economic sabotage of those who use statist contracts to
|
||||
thwart freedom (e.g., parts of AT&T)
|
||||
+ direct sabotage
|
||||
- someday, viruses, HERF, etc.
|
||||
17.4.9. A Vision of the Future
|
||||
- encrypted, secure, untraceable communications
|
||||
- hundreds of remailers, in many countries
|
||||
- interwoven with ordinary traffic, ensuring that any attempt
|
||||
to quash crypto would also have a dramatic effect on
|
||||
business
|
||||
- data havens, credit, renters, etc.
|
||||
- information markets
|
||||
- ability to fight wars is hindered
|
||||
- U.S. is frantic, as its grip on the world loosens...Pax
|
||||
Americana dies
|
||||
17.4.10. Key concepts are the way to handle the complexity of crypto
|
||||
- The morass of protocols, systems, and results is best
|
||||
analyzed, I think, by not losing sight of the basic
|
||||
"primitives," the things about identity, security,
|
||||
authentication, etc. that make crypto systems work the way
|
||||
they do.
|
||||
+ Axiom systems, with theorems and lemmas derivable from the
|
||||
axioms
|
||||
- with alternate axioms giving the equivalent of "non-
|
||||
Euclidean geometries" (in a sense, removing the physical
|
||||
identity postulate and replacing it with the "the key is
|
||||
the identity" postulate gives a new landscape of
|
||||
interactions, implications, and structures).
|
||||
- (Markets, local references, voluntary transactions, etc.)
|
||||
- (ecologies, predators, defenders, etc.)
|
||||
- (game theory, economics, etc..)
|
||||
|
||||
17.5. Net of the Future
|
||||
17.5.1. "What role, if any, will MUDs, MOOs, and Virtual Realities
|
||||
play?"
|
||||
- "True Names," "Snow Crash," "Shockwave Rider"
|
||||
- Habitat, online services
|
||||
+ the interaction is far beyond just the canonical "text
|
||||
messages" that systems like Digital Telephony are designed
|
||||
to cope with
|
||||
- where is the nexus of the message?
|
||||
- what about conferences scattered around the world, in
|
||||
multiple jurisdictions?
|
||||
- crypto = glue, mortar, building blocks
|
||||
- "rooms" = private places; issues of access control
|
||||
- Unless cops are put into these various "rooms," via a
|
||||
technology we can barely imagine today (agents?), it will
|
||||
be essentially impossible to control what happens in these
|
||||
rooms and places. Too many degrees of freedom, too many
|
||||
avenues for exchange.
|
||||
- cyberspaces, MUDs, virtual communities, private law,
|
||||
untouchable by physical governments
|
||||
17.5.2. keyword-based
|
||||
- can be spoofed by including dictionaries
|
||||
17.5.3. dig sig based (reputation-based)
|
||||
17.5.4. pools and anonymous areas may be explicitly supported
|
||||
17.5.5. better newsreaders, screens, filters
|
||||
17.5.6. Switches
|
||||
- "switching fabrics"
|
||||
- ATM
|
||||
- Intel's flexible mesh interconnects, iWARP, etc.
|
||||
- all of these will make for an exponential increase in
|
||||
degrees of freedom for remailer networks (labyrinths). On-
|
||||
chip remailing is esentially what is needed for Chaum's
|
||||
mixes. ATM quanta (packets) are the next likely target for
|
||||
remailers.
|
||||
17.5.7. "What limits on the Net are being proposed?"
|
||||
- NII
|
||||
+ Holding carriers liable for content
|
||||
- e.g., suing Compuserve or Netcom
|
||||
- often done with bulletin boards
|
||||
- "We have to do something!"
|
||||
+ Newspapers are complaining about the Four Horsemen of the
|
||||
Infocalypse:
|
||||
- terrorists, pedophiles, drug dealers, and money
|
||||
launderers
|
||||
+ The "L.A. Times" opines:
|
||||
- "Designers of the new Information Age were inspired by
|
||||
noble dreams of free-flowing data as a global
|
||||
liberating force, a true democratizing agent. Sadly,
|
||||
the crooks and creeps have also climbed aboard. The
|
||||
time has come for much tighter computer security.
|
||||
After all, banks learned to put locks on their vaults."
|
||||
["L.A. Times," editorial, 1994-07-13]
|
||||
|
||||
17.6. The Effects of Strong Crypto on Society
|
||||
17.6.1. "What will be the effects of strong crypto, ultimately, on
|
||||
the social fabric?"
|
||||
- It's hard to know for sure.
|
||||
+ These effects seem likely:
|
||||
- Starvation of government tax revenues, with concommitant
|
||||
effects on welfare, spending, etc.
|
||||
- increases in espioage
|
||||
- trust issues
|
||||
17.6.2. The revelations of surveillance and monitoring of citizens
|
||||
and corporations will serve to increase the use of
|
||||
encryption, at first by people with something to hide, and
|
||||
then by others. Cypherpunks are already helping by spreading
|
||||
the word of these situations.
|
||||
- a snowballing effect
|
||||
- and various government agencies will themselves use
|
||||
encryption to protect their files and their privacy
|
||||
17.6.3. People making individual moral choices
|
||||
- people will make their own choices as to what to reveal,
|
||||
what they think will help world peace, or the future, or
|
||||
the dolphins, or whatever
|
||||
- and this will be a liquid market, not just souls shouting
|
||||
in the desert
|
||||
- of course, not everything will be revealed, but the "mosaic
|
||||
effect" ensures that mostly the truth will emerge
|
||||
- every government's worst fear, that it's subjects will
|
||||
decide for themselves what is secret, what is not, what can
|
||||
be told to foreigners, etc.
|
||||
|
||||
17.7. New Software Tools and Programming Frameworks
|
||||
17.7.1. Needed software
|
||||
- Drop-in crypto modules are a needed development. As V.
|
||||
Bontchev says, "it would be nice if disk encryption
|
||||
software allowed the user to plug in their own modules.
|
||||
This way everybody could use whatever they trust - MDC/SHA,
|
||||
MDC/MD5, DES, IDEA, whatever." [V.B., sci.crypt, 1994-07-
|
||||
01]
|
||||
+ Robustness
|
||||
- Security and robustness are often at odds
|
||||
- Files that are wiped at the first hint of intrusion
|
||||
(digital flash paper), remailer sites that go down at the
|
||||
first signs of trouble, and file transmission systems
|
||||
that split files into multiple pieces--any one of which
|
||||
can be lost, thus destroying the whole transmission--are
|
||||
not exactly models of robustness.
|
||||
- Error correction usually works by decreasing entropy
|
||||
through redundancy, which is bad for crypto.
|
||||
- The military uses elaborate (and expensive) systems to
|
||||
ensure that systems do not go down, keys are not lost,
|
||||
etc. Most casual users of crypto are unwilling to take
|
||||
these steps.
|
||||
- And so keys are lost, passphrases are forgotten (or are
|
||||
written down on Post-It Notes and taped to terminals),
|
||||
and remailers are taken down when operators go on
|
||||
vacation. All very flaky and non-robust.
|
||||
- Look at how flaky mail delivery is!
|
||||
+ A challenge is to create systems which are:
|
||||
- robust
|
||||
- not too complicated and labor-intensive to use
|
||||
- where redundancy does not compromise security
|
||||
+ Crypto workbench
|
||||
- An overused term, perhaps, but one that captures the
|
||||
metaphor of a large set of tools, templates, programming
|
||||
aids, etc.
|
||||
+ QKS and "Agents Construction Kit" (under development)
|
||||
- along with Dylan, DylanAgents, Telescript, and probably
|
||||
several other attempts to develop agent toolkits
|
||||
- Henry Strickland is using "tcl" (sort of a scripting
|
||||
language, like "perl") as a basis.
|
||||
+ Software crisis
|
||||
- tools, languages, frameworks, environments, objects,
|
||||
class libraries, methods, agents, correctness,
|
||||
robustness, evolution, prototyping
|
||||
+ Connections between the software crisis and cryptography
|
||||
- complex systems, complicated protocols
|
||||
- price of being "wrong" can be very high, whether it's
|
||||
an airport that can't open on time (Denver) or a
|
||||
digital bank that has its assets drained in seconds
|
||||
- agents, objects are hoped to be the "silver bullets"
|
||||
+ The need for better software methodologies
|
||||
- "silver bullets"
|
||||
- failures, errors, flaws, methods
|
||||
- provably correct designs? (a la Viper)
|
||||
- It is often said that much better methodologies are
|
||||
needed for _real time programming_, due to the time-
|
||||
criticality and (probably) the difficulty of doing
|
||||
realistic testing. But surely the same should be said
|
||||
of _financial programming_, a la the banking and
|
||||
digicash schemes that interest us so much.
|
||||
- "the one aspect of software that most makes it the
|
||||
flaky industry it is is that it is unusual for
|
||||
practitioners to study the work of others. Programmers
|
||||
don't read great programs. Designers don't study
|
||||
outstanding designs. The consequences ... no, just look
|
||||
for yourself. [Cameron Laird, comp.software-eng, 1994-
|
||||
08-30]
|
||||
+ Large Software Constructs
|
||||
- The software crisis becomes particularly acute when
|
||||
large systems are built, such as--to apply this to
|
||||
Cypherpunks issues--when digital money systems and
|
||||
economies are built.
|
||||
17.7.2. Object-oriented tools
|
||||
+ While tres trendy, some very real gains are being reported;
|
||||
more than just a buzzword, especially when combined with
|
||||
other tools:
|
||||
- frameworks, toolkits
|
||||
+ dynamic languages
|
||||
- greater flexibility than with static, strongly-typed
|
||||
langueages (but also less safety, usually)
|
||||
- OpenStep, Visual Age, Visual Basic, Dylan, Telescript (more
|
||||
agent-oriented), Lisp, Smalltalk, etc
|
||||
17.7.3. Protocol Ecologies
|
||||
- Behavioral simulations of agents, digital money, spoofing,
|
||||
etc.
|
||||
- the world in which Alice and Bob and their crypto friends
|
||||
live
|
||||
- defense, attack, spoofing, impersonation, theft
|
||||
- elements that are cryptographically strong (like D-H key
|
||||
exchanges), but combined in complex ways that almost have
|
||||
to be simulated to find weaknesses
|
||||
- "middle-out" instead of "top-down" (conventional, formal)
|
||||
or "bottom-up" (emergent, A-LIFE)
|
||||
- like Eurisko (Lenat), except oriented toward the domain of
|
||||
financial agents
|
||||
17.7.4. Use of autonomous agents (slaves?)
|
||||
- "An advanced telecommunications environment offers a number
|
||||
of ways to protect yourself against the problems involved
|
||||
in dealing with anonymous entities in a situation in which
|
||||
there is no monopoly Government.....When one's PBX finds
|
||||
that one's call is not going through via a particular long
|
||||
distance carrier, it automatically switches to another one.
|
||||
It is easy to imagine one's intelligent agents testing
|
||||
various sorts of transaction completions and switching
|
||||
vendors when one fails. Professional checkers can supply
|
||||
information on vendor status for a fee. After all, we don't
|
||||
care if a company we are dealing with changes if its
|
||||
service is unaffected." [Duncan Frissell, 1994-08-30]
|
||||
17.7.5. Tools
|
||||
+ "Languages within languages" is a standard way to go to
|
||||
implement abstractions
|
||||
- "Intermediate Design Languages" (IDLs)
|
||||
- abstract concepts: such as "engines" and "futures"
|
||||
- Lisp and Scheme have been favored languages for this
|
||||
- other languages as well: Smalltalk, Dylan
|
||||
+ For crypto, this seems to be the case: abstractions
|
||||
represented as classes or objects
|
||||
- with programming then the selective subclassing
|
||||
- and sometimes gener
|
||||
+ "type checking" of crypto objects is needed
|
||||
- to ensure compliance with protocols, with forms expected,
|
||||
etc.
|
||||
- check messages for form, removal of sigs, etc. (analogous
|
||||
to checking a letter before mailing for proper
|
||||
addressing, for stamp, sealing, etc.)
|
||||
- much of the nonrobustness of mail and crypto comes from
|
||||
the problems with exception handling--things that a human
|
||||
involved might be able to resolve, in conventional mail
|
||||
systems
|
||||
- "dead letter department"?
|
||||
- Note: In the "Crypto Anarchy Game" we played in
|
||||
September, 1992, many sealed messages were discarded for
|
||||
being in the wrong form, lacking the remailer fee that
|
||||
the remailer required, etc. Granted, human beings make
|
||||
fairly poor maintainers of complex constraints....a lot
|
||||
of people just kept forgetting to do what was needed. A
|
||||
great time was had by all.
|
||||
17.7.6. "What programming framework features are needed?"
|
||||
- What follows are definitely my opnions, even more my own
|
||||
opinions than most of what I've written. Many people will
|
||||
disagree.
|
||||
+ Needed:
|
||||
- Flexibility over speed
|
||||
- Rapid prototyping, to add new features
|
||||
- Evolutionary approaches
|
||||
- Robustness (provably correct would be nice, but...)
|
||||
17.7.7. Frameworks, Tools, Capabilities
|
||||
- Nearly all the cutting-edge work in operating systems, from
|
||||
"mutually suspicious cooperating processes" to "deadlock"
|
||||
to "persistence," show up in the crypto areas we are
|
||||
considering.
|
||||
+ Software of the Net vs. Software to Access the Net
|
||||
- The Net--is current form adequate?
|
||||
- Software for Accessing the Net
|
||||
+ OpenDoc and OLE
|
||||
- components working together, on top of various operating
|
||||
systems, on top of various hardware platforms
|
||||
+ Persistent Object Stores
|
||||
- likely to be needed for the systems we envision
|
||||
- robust, so that one's "money" doesn't evaporate when a
|
||||
system is rebooted!
|
||||
- interesting issues here...
|
||||
- CORBA. OpenDoc, OLE II, SOM, DOE, Gemstone, etc.
|
||||
+ Programming Frameworks
|
||||
- Dynamic languages may be very useful when details are
|
||||
fuzzy, when the ideas need exploration (this is not a
|
||||
call for nondeterminism, for random futzing around, but a
|
||||
recognition that the precise, strongly-typed approach of
|
||||
some languages may be less useful than a rich,
|
||||
exploratory environment. This fits with the "ecology"
|
||||
point of view.
|
||||
-
|
||||
+ Connectivity
|
||||
- needs to be more robust, not flaky the way current e-mail
|
||||
is
|
||||
- handshakes, agents, robust connections
|
||||
- ATM, SONET, agents, etc....the "Net of the Future"
|
||||
|
||||
17.8. Complexity
|
||||
17.8.1. The shifting sands of modern, complex systems
|
||||
- lots of cruft, detail...changing..related to the "software
|
||||
crisis"...the very flexibilty of modern software systems
|
||||
promotes the frequent changing of features and behaviors,
|
||||
thus playing hob with attempts of others to understand the
|
||||
structure...evolution in action
|
||||
- humans who use these systems forget how the commands work,
|
||||
where things are stored, how to unsubscribe from lists,
|
||||
etc. (This is just one reason the various sub-lists of our
|
||||
list have seldom gotten much traffic: people use what they
|
||||
are most used to using, and forget the rest.)
|
||||
- computer agents (scripts, programs) which use these systems
|
||||
often "break" when the underlying system changes. A good
|
||||
example of this are the remailer sites, and scripts to use
|
||||
them. As remailer sites go up and down, as keys change, as
|
||||
other things change, the scripts must change to keep pace.
|
||||
- This very document is another example. Scattered throughout
|
||||
are references to sites, programs, sources, etc. As time
|
||||
goes by, more and more of them will (inevitably) become
|
||||
obsolete. (My hope is that enough of the pointers will
|
||||
point to still-extant things so as to make the pointers
|
||||
remain useful. And I'll try to update/correct the bad
|
||||
pointers.)
|
||||
17.8.2. "Out of Control"
|
||||
- Kevin Kelly's book
|
||||
- inability to have precise control, and how this is
|
||||
consistent with evolution, emergent properties, limits of
|
||||
formal models
|
||||
- crypto, degrees of freedom
|
||||
+ imagine nets of the near future
|
||||
- ten-fold increase in sites, users, domains
|
||||
- ATM switching fabrics..granularity of transactions
|
||||
changes...convergence of computing and communications...
|
||||
+ distributed computation ( which, by the way, surely needs
|
||||
crypto security!)
|
||||
- Joule, Digital Silk Road
|
||||
- agents, etc.
|
||||
+ can't control the distribution of information
|
||||
+ As with the Amateur Action BBS case, access can't be
|
||||
controlled.
|
||||
- "The existance of gateways and proxy servers means that
|
||||
there is no effective way to determine where any
|
||||
information you make accessible will eventually end up.
|
||||
Somebody in, say, Tennessee can easily get at an FTP
|
||||
site in California through a proxy in Switzerland.
|
||||
Even detailed information about what kind of
|
||||
information is considered contraband in every
|
||||
jurisdiction in the world won't help, unless every
|
||||
*gateway* in the world has it and uses it as well."
|
||||
[Stephen R. Savitzky, comp.org.eff.talk, 1994-08-08]
|
||||
17.8.3. A fertile union of cryptology, game theory, economics, and
|
||||
ecology
|
||||
+ crypto has long ignored economics, except peripherally, as
|
||||
an engineering issue (how long encryption takes, etc.)
|
||||
- in particular, areas of reputation, risk, etc. have not
|
||||
been treated as central idea...perhaps proper for
|
||||
mathematical algorithm work
|
||||
- but economics is clearly central to the systems being
|
||||
planned...digital cash, data havens, remailers, etc.
|
||||
+ why cash works so well...locality of reference, immediate
|
||||
clearing of transactions, forces computations down to
|
||||
relevant units
|
||||
- reduces complaints, "he made me do it" arguments...that
|
||||
is, increases self-responsibility...caveat emptor
|
||||
+ game theory
|
||||
+ ripe for treatment of "Alice and Bob" sorts of
|
||||
situations, in which agents with different agendas are
|
||||
interacting and competing
|
||||
- "defecting" as in Prisoner's Dilemma
|
||||
- payoff matrices for various behaviors
|
||||
- evolutionary game theory
|
||||
- evolutionary learning, genetic algorithms/programmming
|
||||
- protocol ecologies
|
||||
|
||||
17.9. Crypto Standards
|
||||
17.9.1. The importance of standards
|
||||
- a critical role
|
||||
+ Part of standards is validation, test suites, etc.
|
||||
- validating the features and security of a remailer,
|
||||
through pings, tests, performance tests, reliability,
|
||||
etc.
|
||||
- thus imposing a negative hit on those who fail
|
||||
+ There are many ways to do this standards testing
|
||||
- market reports (as with commercial chips, software)
|
||||
- "seals of approval" (especially convenient with digital
|
||||
sigs)
|
||||
|
||||
17.10. Crypto Research
|
||||
17.10.1. Academic research continues to increase
|
||||
17.10.2. "What's the future of crypto?"
|
||||
- Predicting the future is notoriously difficult. IBM didn't
|
||||
think many computers would ever be sold, Western Union
|
||||
passed on the chance to buy Bell's telephone patents. And
|
||||
so on. The future is always cloudy, the past is always
|
||||
clear and obvious.
|
||||
- We'll know in 30 years which of our cypherpunkish and
|
||||
cryptoanarchist predictions came to pass--and which didn't.
|
||||
17.10.3. Ciphers are somewhat like knots...the right sequence of moves
|
||||
unties them, the wrong sequence only makes them more tangled.
|
||||
("Knot theory" is becoming a hot topic in math and physics
|
||||
(work of Vaughn Jones, string theory, etc.) and I suspect
|
||||
there are some links between knot theory and crypto.)
|
||||
17.10.4. Game theory, reputations, crypto -- a lot to be done here
|
||||
- a missing link, an area not covered in academic cryptology
|
||||
research
|
||||
- distributed trust models, collusion, cooperation,
|
||||
evolutionary game theory, ecologies, systems
|
||||
17.10.5. More advanced areas, newer approaches
|
||||
+ some have suggested quasigroups, Latin squares, finite
|
||||
automata, etc. Quasigroups are important in the IDEA
|
||||
cipher, and in some DES work. (I won't speculate furher
|
||||
about an area I no almost nothing about....I'd heard of
|
||||
semigroups, but not quasigroups.)
|
||||
- "The "Block Mixing Transform" technology which I have
|
||||
been promoting on sci.crypt for much of this spring and
|
||||
summer is a Latin square technology. (This was part of
|
||||
my "Large Block DES" project, which eventually produced
|
||||
the "Fenced DES" cipher as a possible DES
|
||||
upgrade.)....Each of the equations in a Block Mixing
|
||||
Transform is the equation for a Latin square. The
|
||||
multiple equations in such a transform together represent
|
||||
orthogonal Latin squares. [Terry Ritter, sci.crypt, 1994-
|
||||
08-15]
|
||||
+ But what about for public key uses? Here's something Perry
|
||||
Metzger ran across:
|
||||
- ""Finte Automata, Latin arrays, and Cryptography" by Tao
|
||||
Renji, Institute of Software, Academia Sinica, Beijing.
|
||||
This (as yet unpublished) paper covers several
|
||||
fascinating topics, including some very fast public key
|
||||
methods -- unfortunately in too little detail. Hopefully
|
||||
a published version will appear soon..." [P.M.,
|
||||
sci.crypt, 1994-08-14]
|
||||
17.10.6. Comments on crypto state of the art today vs. what is likely
|
||||
to be coming
|
||||
- Perry Metzger comments on today's practical difficulties:
|
||||
"...can the difference between "crypto can be transforming
|
||||
when the technology matures" and "crypto is mature now" be
|
||||
that unobvious?....One of the reasons I'm involved with the
|
||||
IETF IPSP effort is because the crypto stuff has to be
|
||||
transparent and ubiquitous before it is going to be truly
|
||||
useful -- in its current form its just junk. Hopefully,
|
||||
later versions of PGP will also interface well with the new
|
||||
standards being developed for an integrated secure message
|
||||
body type in MIME. (PGP also requires some sort of scalable
|
||||
and reverse mapable keyid system -- the current keyids are
|
||||
not going to allow key servers to scale in a distributed
|
||||
manner.) Yes, I've seen the shell scripts and the rest, and
|
||||
they really require too much effort for most people -- and
|
||||
at best, once you have things set up, you can now securely
|
||||
read some email at some sites. I know that for myself,
|
||||
given that I read a large fraction of my mail while working
|
||||
at clients, where I emphatically do not trust the hardware,
|
||||
every encrypted message means great inconvenience,
|
||||
regardless." [Perry Metzger, 1994-08-25]
|
||||
|
||||
17.11. Crypto Armageddon? Cryptageddon?
|
||||
17.11.1. "Will there be a "Waco in cyberspace"?"
|
||||
- while some of us are very vocal here, and are probably
|
||||
known to the authorities, this is not generally the case.
|
||||
Many of the users of strong crypto will be discreet and
|
||||
will not give outward appearances of being code-using
|
||||
crypto anarchist cultists.
|
||||
17.11.2. Attacks to come
|
||||
- "You'll see these folks attacking anonymous remailers,
|
||||
cryptography, psuedonymous accounts, and other tools of
|
||||
coercion-free expression and information interchange on
|
||||
the net, ironically often in the name of promoting
|
||||
"commerce". You'll hear them rant and rave about
|
||||
"criminals" and "terrorists", as if they even had a good
|
||||
clue about the laws of the thousands of jurisdictions
|
||||
criss-crossed by the Internet, and as if their own attempts
|
||||
to enable coercion bear no resemblance to the practice of
|
||||
terrorism. The scary thing is, they really think they
|
||||
have a good idea about what all those laws should be, and
|
||||
they're perfectly willing to shove it down our throats,
|
||||
regardless of the vast diversity of culture, intellectual,
|
||||
political, and legal opinion on the planet."
|
||||
[<an50@desert.hacktic.nl> (Nobody), libtech-l@netcom.com,
|
||||
1994-06-08]
|
||||
+ why I'm not sanguine about Feds
|
||||
- killing Randy Weaver's wife and son from a distance,
|
||||
after trumped-up weapons charges
|
||||
- burning alive the Koresh compound, on trumped-up charges
|
||||
of Satanism, child abuse, and wife-insulting
|
||||
- seizures of boats, cars, etc., on "suspicion" of
|
||||
involvement with drugs
|
||||
|
||||
17.12. "The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades"
|
||||
17.12.1. Despite the occasionally gloomy predictions, things look
|
||||
pretty good.No guarantees, of course, but trends that are
|
||||
favorable. No reason for us to rest, though.
|
||||
17.12.2. Duncan Frissell puts it this way:
|
||||
- "Trade is way up. Wealth is way up. International travel
|
||||
is way up. Migration is way up. Resource prices are the
|
||||
lowest in human history. Communications costs are way
|
||||
down. Electronics costs are way down. We are in a zero or
|
||||
negative inflation environment. The quantity and quality
|
||||
of goods and services offered on the markets is at an all-
|
||||
time high. The percentage of the world's countries headed
|
||||
by dictators is the lowest it's ever been.
|
||||
|
||||
"What all this means is that political philosophies that
|
||||
depend on force of arms to push people into line, will
|
||||
increasingly fail to work. Rich people with choices will,
|
||||
when coerced, tend to change their investments and
|
||||
business affairs into a friendlier form or to move to a
|
||||
friendlier environment. Choice is real. If choices
|
||||
exist, they will be made. An ever higher proportion of the
|
||||
world's people will be "rich" in wealth and choice as the
|
||||
years go on.
|
||||
|
||||
"Only a political philosophy that depends on the uncoerced
|
||||
cooperation of very different people has a chance of
|
||||
functioning in the future." [Duncan Frissell, 1994-09-09]
|
||||
|
||||
17.13. "Will cryptography really bring on the Millenium?"
|
||||
17.13.1. Yes. And cats will move in with dogs, Snapple will rain from
|
||||
the sky, and P will be shown unequal to NP.
|
||||
17.13.2. Seriously, the implications of strong privacy, of
|
||||
cyberspatial economies, and of borders becoming transparent
|
||||
are enormous. The way governments do business is already
|
||||
changing, and this will change things even more dramatically.
|
||||
The precise form may be unpredictable, but certain end states
|
||||
are fairly easy to predict in broad brush strokes.
|
||||
17.13.3. "How do we know the implications of crypto are what I've
|
||||
claimed?"
|
||||
- We can't know the future.
|
||||
- Printing, railroads, electrification
|
||||
17.13.4. "When will it all happen? When will strong crypto really
|
||||
begin to have a major effect on the economy?"
|
||||
+ Stages:
|
||||
- The Prehistoric Era. Prior to 1975. NSA and other
|
||||
intelligence agencies controlled most crypto work.
|
||||
Cryptography seen as a hobby. DES just starting to be
|
||||
deployed by banks and financial institutions.
|
||||
- The Research Era. 1975-1992. Intense interest in public
|
||||
key discovery, in various protocols. Start of several
|
||||
"Crypto" conferences. Work on digital money, DC-Nets,
|
||||
timestamping, etc.
|
||||
- The Activism Era. 1992--?? (probably 1998). PGP 2.0
|
||||
released. Cypherpunks formed. Clipper announced--meets
|
||||
firestorm of protest. EFF, CPSR, EPIC, other groups.
|
||||
"Wired" starts publication. Digital Telelphony, other
|
||||
bills. Several attempts to start crypto businesses are
|
||||
made...most founder.
|
||||
- The Transition Era. After about 1999. Businesses start.
|
||||
Digital cash needed for Net transactions. Networks and
|
||||
computers fast enough to allow more robust protocols. Tax
|
||||
havens flourish. "New Underworld Order" (credit to Claire
|
||||
Sterling) flourishes.
|
||||
- It is premature to expect that the current environment--
|
||||
technological and regulatory--will be beneficial to the
|
||||
type of strong crypto we favor. Too many pieces are
|
||||
missing. Several more advances are needed. A few more
|
||||
failures are also needed (gulp!) to show better how not to
|
||||
proceed.
|
||||
17.13.5. "But will crypto anarchy actually happen?"
|
||||
- To a growing extent, it already is happening. Look at the
|
||||
so-called illegal markets, the flows of drug money around
|
||||
the world, the transfer of billions of dollars a day on
|
||||
mere "chop marks," and the thriving trade in banned items.
|
||||
- "Grey and black capitalism is already a major component of
|
||||
international cash flows....Once adequate user friendly
|
||||
software is available, the internet will accellerate this
|
||||
already existing trend....Crypto anarchy is merely the
|
||||
application of modern tools to assist covert capitalism."
|
||||
[James Donald, 1994-08-29]
|
||||
- There are arguments that a Great Crackdown is coming, that
|
||||
governments will shut down illegal markets, will stop
|
||||
strong crypto, will force underground economies
|
||||
aboveground. This is doubtful--it's been tried for the past
|
||||
several decades (or more). Prohibition merely made crime
|
||||
more organized; ditto for the War on (Some) Drugs.
|
||||
17.13.6. "Has the point of no return been passed on strong crypto?"
|
||||
- Actually, I think that in the U.S. at least, the point was
|
||||
passed decades ago, possibly a century or more ago, and
|
||||
that any hope of controlling strong crypto and private
|
||||
communication evaporated long ago. Abuses by the FBI in
|
||||
wiretapping Americans, and reports of NSA monitoring of
|
||||
domestic communications notwithstanding, it is
|
||||
essentially.....
|
||||
|
||||
17.14. Loose Ends
|
||||
17.14.1. firewalls, virtual perimeters, swIPe-type encrypted tunnels,
|
||||
an end to break-ins,
|
||||
17.14.2. "What kind of encryption will be used with ATM?"
|
||||
- (ATM = Asynchronous Transfer Mode, not Automated Teller
|
||||
Machine)
|
||||
- some reports that NSA is developing standards for ATM
|
||||
17.14.3. Shapes of things to come, maybe....(laws of other countries)
|
||||
+ India has a fee schedule for BBS operators, e.g., they have
|
||||
to pay $50,000 a year to operate a bulletin board! (This
|
||||
sounds like the urban legend about the FCC planning a modem
|
||||
tax, but maybe it's true.)
|
||||
- "The Forum for Rights to Electronic Expression (FREE) has
|
||||
been formed in India as a body dedicated to extending
|
||||
fundamental rights to the electronic domain....FREE owes
|
||||
its creation to an attack on Indian datacom by the Indian
|
||||
government, in the form of exorbitant licence fees (a
|
||||
minimum Rs. 1.5 million = US$50,000 each year for a BBS,
|
||||
much higher for e-mail)." [amehta@doe.ernet.in (Dr. Arun
|
||||
Mehta), forwarded by Phil Agre, comp.org.cpsr.talk, 1994-
|
||||
08-31]
|
||||
- for more info: ftp.eff.org
|
||||
/pub/EFF/Policy/World/India/FREE
|
||||
17.14.4. Cyberspace will need better protection
|
||||
- to ensure spoofing and counterfeiting is reduced (recall
|
||||
Habitat's problems with people figuring out the loopholes)
|
||||
Loading…
Reference in New Issue