Crypto Takes a Holiday (NYET, Children, etc.)

[remove reflective headgear, cough, adjust nomex underwear, blow whistle..]

Good afternoon.

Having just percipitated an accidental thread on rockets, I'm not one to
talk, really. That's never really stopped me before, of course...

However, if someone could tell me a direct relationship between strong
crypto and parental values, control of one's offspring, evangelical
christianity, and other inherent Rights of Mankind(tm), I would greatly
appreciate it...

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

[check respirator, pull down headgear, resume position behind corrigated
steel barricade]


-----------------
Robert Hettinga  (rah@shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone
Shipwright Development Corporation     who eats too little and sees Heaven and
44 Farquhar Street                       someone who drinks too much and sees
Boston, MA 02331 USA                       snakes." -- Bertrand Russell
(617) 323-7923

> 
> [remove reflective headgear, cough, adjust nomex underwear, blow whistle..]
> 
> Good afternoon.
> 
> Having just percipitated an accidental thread on rockets, I'm not one to
> talk, really. That's never really stopped me before, of course...

Chill out. This is a quiet day on Cypherpunks, and clearly a lot of
people have views on this. If you'd rather debate whether
multiplicative Abelian subgroups contain inverses which can be used
for crypto purposes, go ahead.

> However, if someone could tell me a direct relationship between strong
> crypto and parental values, control of one's offspring, evangelical
> christianity, and other inherent Rights of Mankind(tm), I would greatly
> appreciate it...

The connection, tenuous (but no more tenuous that a hundred other
threads these past two years), is that of source-level or
receiver-level blocking is central to many of the proposals here and
in general:

* Centralized control: Source-level blocking. "We must protect the
innocents from X" (Where X is, variously: pro-Christian material,
anti-Christian material, pro/con Muslim, Mormon, Jewish, etc.
material, violent images, Barney images, sex, anti-sex, etc.).

* Decentralized, market control: Receiver-level blocking. "I'll decide
what I want to see." Local filter agents, local control. (This
includes voluntary services like Prodigy, provided an alternative
exists.)

Strong crypto makes the second view impossible to stop.

Is this enough of a connection?

Or should we declare this debate illegal and go back to asking what
the best way to generate random numbers is?

(I'm not dissin' the random number people...we've just seen that
debate too many times, with too little advance progress by people who
refuse to check out the Blum-Blum-Shub papers and whatnot.)

I doubt I can convince Nathan Zooks that his idea for a world-wide
police state to ensure that children are not exposed to anti-Christian
material is a lousy idea, or that I can convince Mike Duvos that his idea
of mandating access to Nathan's "Funny Mentalist" children so as to
de-program them is an equally lousy idea, but I sure do hope I can
convince most of you that central control just doesn't work.

Let the ideas compete, but don't argue for a Net that is what the
Unites States was ostensibly organized to avoid.

It ain't perfect, and neither will crypto-anarchy be perfect, but it
beats having cops come to my door.

--Tim May

-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

In fairness to the original proposal, it's worth remembering that his
purpose was not specifically to impose censorship on the net, but rather
to protect BBS operators (and net access providers) from legal liability for
providing pornographic and other questionable material to children.

Granted, his method for doing so did amount to a lot of laws and censor-
ship, and I can't agree with that any more than others here.  But the problem
isn't going to disappear under an onslaught of rhetoric.  As I said, I
can sympathize with concerned parents, and although my personal philosophies
would not support a censorship-based solution, not everyone will feel as

There is a movement afoot to hook schools up to the net, part of the general
"superhighway" initiative.  This is going to raise the public profile of the
adult material on the net and increase pressure for ways to limit the
access of youngsters to it.  One response we can have is to dig in our heels
against any censorship, and say, "don't put your school on the net if you
don't want your kids reading about bestiality."  From my experience, this
would be equivalent to saying "don't put schools on the net."  That will not
be a politically acceptable solution.

I really don't know what the ultimate resolution of this conflict will
be.  IMO, the Internet as it stands today is incompatible with the
conventional mores of much of society.  Either the Internet will be
bowdlerized, or perhaps split into "X-rated" vs "G-rated" sections.
Maybe a completely new internetwork is needed, one with more controls and
limitations.  Then perhaps the current internet could continue to exist
in close to its present form.

I know that some people are optimistic that the Internet will change
society rather than vice versa.  They hope that as more and more people join
the net that they will become tolerant of the much wider range of views and
practices than are common in most people's home towns.  But I don't think it
will come out this way.  Society is a lot bigger than the net, and the
character of the net will inevitably change as the membership changes.

In some ways this is reminiscent of our earlier debates about whether
society would be able to prevent the advent of widespread lawbreaking
due to Tim's conception of "crypto anarchy."  I have always been
skeptical that our software and ideas can really succeed in the face of
strong social opposition.  For similar reasons I think that the net
will be cleansed of pornography if people feel strongly enough about
it.  So I do see a lot of connections to crypto issues in this
debate.

Hal