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Cyphernomicon 13.11

Activism and Projects:
Loose ends


  13.11.1. Deals, deals, deals!
           - pressures by Administration...software key escrow, digital
              telephony, cable regulation
           + and suppliers need government support on legislation,
              benefits, spectrum allocation, etc
             - reports that Microsoft is lobbying intensively to gain
                control of big chunks of spectrum...could fit with cable
                set-top box negotiations, Teledesic, SKE, etc.
           - EFF even participates in some of these deals. Being "inside
              the Beltway" has this kind of effect, where one is either a
              "player" or a "non-player." (This is my interpretation of
              how power corrupts all groups that enter the Beltway.)
              Shmoozing and a desire to help.
  13.11.2. using crypto to bypass laws on contacts and trade with other
            countries
           - one day it's illegal to have contact with China, the next
              day it's encouraged
           + one day it's legal to have contact with Haiti, the next day
              there's an embargo (and in the case of Haiti, the economic
              effects fall on on the poor--the tens of thousands fleeing
              are not fleeing the rulers, but the poverty made worse by
              the boycott
             - (The military rulers are just the usual thugs, but
                they're not "our" thugs, for reasons of history. Aristide
                would almost certainly be as bad, being a Marxist priest.
                Thus, I consider the breakin of the embargo to be a
                morally good thing to do.
           - who's to say why Haiti is suddenly to be shunned? By force
              of law, no less!
  13.11.3. Sun Tzu's "Art of War" has useful tips (more useful than "The
            Prince")
           - work with lowliest
           - sabotage good name of enemy
           - spread money around
           - I think the events of the past year, including...
  13.11.4. The flakiness of current systems...
           - The current crypto infrastructure is fairly flaky, though
              the distributed web-of-trust model is better than some
              centralized system, of coure. What I mean is that many
              aspects are slow, creaky, and conducive to errors.
           - In the area of digital cash, what we have now is not even
              as advanced as was seen with real money in Sumerian times!
              (And I wouldn't trust the e-mail "message in a bottle"
              approach for any nontrivial financial transactions.)
           - Something's got to change. The NII/Superhighway/Infobahn
              people have plans, but their plans are not likely to mesh
              well with ours. A challenge for us to consider.
  13.11.5. "Are there dangers in being too paranoid?"
           + As Eric Hughes put it,  "paranoia is cryptography's
              occupational hazard."
             - "The effect of paranoia is self-delusion of the following
                form--that one's possible explanations are skewed toward
                malicious attacks, by individuals, that one has the
                technical knowledge to anticipate.  This skewing creates
                an inefficient allocation of mental energy, it tends
                toward the personal, downplaying the possibility of
                technical error, and it begins to close off examination
                of technicalities not fully understood.
                
                "Those who resist paranoia will become better at
                cryptography than those who do not, all other things
                being equal.  Cryptography is about epistemology, that
                is, assurances of truth, and only secondarily about
                ontology, that is, what actually is true.  The goal of
                cryptography is to create an accurate confidence that a
                system is private and secure. In order to create that
                confidence, the system must actually be secure, but
                security is not sufficient.  There must be confidence
                thatthe way by which this security becomes to be believed
                is robust and immune to delusion.
                
                "Paranoia creates delusion.  As a direct and fundamental
                result, it makes one worse at cryptography.  At the
                outside best, it makes one slower, as the misallocation
                of attention leads one down false trails. Who has the
                excess brainpower for that waste?  Certainly not I.  At
                the worst, paranoia makes one completely ineffective, not
                only in technical means but even more so in the social
                context in which cryptography is necessarily relevant."
                [Eric Hughes, 1994-05-14]
           + King Alfred Plan, blacks
             - plans to round up 20 million blacks
             - RFK, links to LAPD, Western Goals, Birch, KKK
             - RFA #9, 23, 38
             +  organized crime situation, perhaps intelligence
                community
               - damaging to blacks, psychological
  13.11.6. The immorality of U.S. boycotts and sanctions
           - as with Haiti, where a standard and comparatively benign
              and harmless military dictatorship is being opposed, we are
              using force to interfere with trade, food shipments,
              financial dealings, etc.
           - invasion of countries that have not attacked other
              countries...a major new escalation of U.S. militarism
           - crypto will facillitate means of underming imperialism
  13.11.7. The "reasonableness" trap
           - making a reasonable thing into a mandatory thing
           - this applies to what Cypherpunks should ever be prepared to
              support
           + An example: A restaurant offers to replace dropped items
              (dropped on the floor, literally) for free...a reasonable
              thing to offer customers (something I see frequently). So
              why not make it the law? Because then the reasonable
              discretion of the restaurant owner would be lost, and some
              customers could "game against" (exploit the letter of the
              law) the system. Even threaten lawsuits.
             - (And libertarians know that "my house, my rules" applies
                to restaurants and other businesses, absent a contract
                spelling exceptions out.)
           - A more serious example is when restaurants (again) find it
              "reasonable" to hire various sorts of qualified people.
              What may be "reasonable" is one thing, but too often the
              government decides to _formalize_ this and takes away the
              right to choose. (In my opinion, no person or group has any
              "right" to a job unless the employer freely offers it. Yes,
              this could included discrimination against various groups.
              Yes, we may dislike this. But the freedom to choose is a
              much more basic right than achieving some ideal of equality
              is.)
           - And when "reasonableness" is enforced by law, the game-
              playing increases. In effect, some discretion is needed to
              reject claims that are based on gaming. Markets naturally
              work this way, as no "basic rights" or contracts are being
              violated.
           - Fortunately, strong crypto makes this nonsense impossible.
              Perforce, people will engage in contracts only voluntarily.
  13.11.8. "How do we get agreement on protocols?"
           - Give this idea up immediately! Agreement to behave in
              certain ways is almost never possible.
           - Is this an indictment of anarchy?
           - No, because the way agreement is sort of reached is through
              standards or examplars that people can get behind. Thus, we
              don't get "consensus" in advance on the taste of Coca
              Cola...somebody offers Coke for sale and then the rest is
              history.
           - PGP is a more relevant example. The examplar is on a "take
              it or leave it" basis, with minor improvements made by
              others, but within the basic format.


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