politics of topology (was On the LAM--Local Area Mixes)

m k gandhi used to say that it was good india was colonised by the _british_ -
the poor fools were vulnerable to non-violent rational argument and (relatively) 
concerned about such oddities as human rights.

one problem with tim may's idea for local area mixes is just that: relying on
US stickliness on wimpy rules for search/interception is all very well, but 
wouldn't fly in china. i won't get into the argument over how awful
the US state is here, but if all cypherpunk technology can fight is the "tyrannical"
democracies of the west, it's not much good, IMNSHO. 

besides, if such technology becomes widespread in, say, the US, then it's 
inevitable that the authorities will tend towards more _real_ tyrannical behaviour, 
diluting search/seizure protections and taking you closer to china. a weak vaccine
 _strengthens_ the microbe it is supposed to kill. 

today your tech may let you plan stink-bomb attacks on the IRS in peace; tomorrow
it may not be sufficient to let you publish articles critical of the goverment.

i always thought the cypherpunk idea ("write code" etc) was to develop tech
that is _independent_ of political protections. technology will not undermine the
power of governments, if it is based on (incorrect) assumptions that governments
will continue to restrain themselves (e.g. search & seizure) when faced by increasing
use of such tech. 

i should think that LAMs would be excellent test-beds for larger-scale systems,
but it is larger-scale systems, where you don't assume the government's _not_
snooping because it's squeamish, that matter more. 

best,
-rishab

First Monday - The Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet 
http://www.firstmonday.dk/  Munksgaard International Publishers, Copenhagen
          
Intl & Managing Editor - Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (ghosh@firstmonday.dk) 
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Wiring houses/business/etc. together simply for the purpose of mixes
is difficult enough that it won't happen enough to be significant.
On the other hand, cable modems keep claiming that they'll be widely
deployed Real Soon Now, and at least some of the cable modem versions
seem to support communications between users on the same cable or
same chunk of the cable network, and may provide a useful medium,
especially if broadcasts/multicasts are available.  On a smaller scale,
there are increasing numbers of office buildings that come with
internet access, and the occasional Palo Alto apartment building is
cooperatively wired.

At 01:48 AM 1/21/98 +-5-30, Rishab Aiyer Ghosh wrote:
>besides, if such technology becomes widespread in, say, the US,
>then it's inevitable that the authorities will tend towards more 
>_real_ tyrannical behaviour, diluting search/seizure protections and 
>taking you closer to china. a weak vaccine
> _strengthens_ the microbe it is supposed to kill. 

We've certainly seen that in the Drug Wars, with no-knock searches
and similar attacks.  On the other hand, use of search warrants in the US
has always been honored more in the breach than the observance -
the year before the Supreme Court issued the Exclusionary Rule,
the New York City police didn't bother getting any search warrants,
because the Constitutional requirement that they do so didn't have
any real enforcement mechanism.

However, LAMs and similar technology have the value that the police
may not notice all the users in a cluster, especially passive lurkers,
and the disappearance of multiple nodes allows the non-seized systems
to get their data out to another data haven and clean up. 
Lurkers may be passive on the LAM, but forward data received from it
out to other media.  Running network protocols without ACKs takes
a bit of work to get right, but you can run the ACKs in some outside
channel to make sure you get everything; much of the work on
multicast protocols can be used to implement it.
				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
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