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The True Story of the InterNet
Part III
InfoWar
Final Frontier of the Digital Revolution
Behind the ElectroMagnetic Curtain
by TruthMonger <tm(a)dev.null>
Copyright 1997 Pearl Publishing
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InfoWar Table of Contents
* Epilogue
* Jonathan
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Epilogue
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The tattered remnants of the Magic Circle sat quietly in front of the lines
drawn in the dirt of the floor of the cave.
Alexis placed a white rock in one of the squares. Jonathan placed a black
rock next to it.
They were engaged in the use of one of the first computers used to wage
InfoWarÂ…an ancient oriental game, called 'Go.'
Fortunes and kingdoms were won and lost over the placement and arrangement
of black and white stones. Like 0 and 1, on and off, yin and yang.
Cowboy was thinking of an article he had pulled up from the past, titled,
"The History of Chess," or some such, from a magazine called 'Playboy.'
It described chess as originating in primitive times, with a board having
only one square on it. Each player had one playing piece, and you could put
your piece on the square, as long as you were willing to back it up with
your fists.
He thought about the battle for control of the InterNet that was taking
place a century in the past. The more things changeÂ…
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Jonathan
"I've looked at life from both sides now,
From win and lose, and still, somehow,
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know lifeÂ…at all.
- Joni Mitchell
During the censorship crisis on the CypherPunks list, when the list members
were trying to make sense of what was going down, a lone voice whispering in
the wilderness pointed out that the battle being waged had little to do with
censorship, and everything to do with InfoWar.
The Tao whispers so that it will be heard by those who do not have all of
their attention tied up in shouting.
The Tao whispered during the censorship crisis, just as it had whispered in
the madness that overtook Germany, then Europe, then the World. It was heard
by the Hermit, and echoed by the Fool. It whispered "InfoWar."
But it seemed that no one had heardÂ…
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The Process of human alchemy marches on: Revelation of the Method. They are
Making Manifest All that is Hidden and what a hell-fire joke it is--for
almost no one is paying conscious attention, even as the secrets of the time
are dropped like pearls before wine.
-Michael A. Hoffman II
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Â…at least, until history took a step back, and a step to the left.
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The whole goal of the hijacking of the phrase "key escrow" to
camouflage GAK was to obscure the difference between voluntary
and involuntary participation.
Someone getting access to your secrets against your will,
whether by trickery, threat of force, or burglary is not
escrow. At least, not until the USG deliberately chose to
abuse that word to throw a mask of legitimacy upon its rotten
idea of mandatory wiretapping for all digital communication.
Damn, but it is frustrating to see such a bare-faced NewSpeak
gambit succeed so brilliantly against otherwise literate people.
Everyone should read George Orwell's paper on (ab)use
of language in politics. None of the examples he cites are
nearly as worthy of Minitru as is this single conceptual hijacking.
-Zooko Journeyman
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At the time that the Trei Transponder exploded, PGP, the holy icon of the
CypherPunks, was under a full-scale frontal attack byÂ…the CypherPunks.
The reasonÂ…Corporate Message Recovery.
Just as the assault by the Dark Forces on PRZ and PGP had alerted the Magic
Circle to a soft spot on the underbelly of Gomez and his Dark Allies, the
assault on CMR and PGP by the CypherPunks alerted the Dark Forces that they
had been premature in celebrating their InfoWar victory in their assault on
the CypherPunks list.
About a century too earlyÂ…
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I presume the PGP PR person (who ought to get the sack in my opinion)
thought that a sudden press release of such marvelous new feature as
PGP SnoopWare and a SnoopWare Enforcer for Third-parties would go down
well. It doesn't.
-Adam Back
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Although PGP's 'Corporate Message Recovery' software had its proponents and
detractors on the CypherPunks list, the bottom line was that it marked a
change in the battle front in the Crypto Wars.
Even Philip R. Zimmerman, himself, was not happy with the PGP name being
lent to a product which amounted to an expansion of the definition of
privacy to include Little Brother as the 'owner' of everyone's privacy
within a company, and thus, by future extension of the concept, Big Brother
as the 'owner' of everyone's privacy within a nation (and eventually, within
the New World Order).
After a short period of CypherPissing about the few pros and many cons of
this new direction in the encryption battle front, the CypherPunk aphorism,
"The answer to noise, is more noise." began to take hold, with Tim May
broaching the possibilities that "forward secrecy systems" might hold for
empowering the individual caught deep within the bowels of the Great
Machine.
Wittingly, or unwittingly, the CypherPunk Philosopher King sidestepped the
Ministry of Truth's new definition of privacy by counter-attacking with a
subtle, but important redefinition of email, by using a seemingly innocent
reference to "conventional e-mail" in his post exploring the possibility of
simply 'routing around' the 'damage' (an old CypherPunk tradition).
Perhaps the answer to 'InfoWar,' is 'more InfoWar.'
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Gomez stared at the mountain of references that his Dark Allies and their
human minions had gleaned from email, news groups, mailing lists and web
sites from around the InterNet-references to troubling new trends and
technologies that foreshadowed a threat to the future that had been
preordained by the Evil One.
PHil's Unified Corporate Key-Yardstick of Outbound Uniformity.
No details, but the reference to Zimmermann was obvious. Had he just begun
to explore new developments in the Corporate Key technology that had been
slipped into the mix of his original concept behind PGP, or did he already
have methodologies in place to defend against the misuse of Corporate
Message Recovery?
SAK - Saboteur Access to Keys
This had the Mark of the Toad written all over it.
Throughout the Corporate Message Recovery system, identical corporate keys
began showing up on different systems. All indications were that people
inside the corporations had access to a method of slipping in the Saboteur
Key in a way which its footprint mirrored that of the original key.
Destination Escrow
This seemed to be the most dangerous of all the quickly emerging
'unconventional email' technologies. It had all the marks of a collaborative
effort between the CypherPunks, the Circle of Eunuch, Alt2600, MI9, COM-12,
and a host of other freeh-dumb fighters.
Remailers, Eternity Servers, Crowds, DevNull Addressing, Inner Onion
Routing-all seemed to play some part in this diverse, but highly effective
methodology of disguising the true routing and final destinations of email
and other communications.
Some of the DE technologies seemed to be escrowed internally, catching the
email after it had been processed by the email system, and before it had
been sent to its destination, either changing the destination, or mirroring
the message to other destinations, as well.
Some seemed to have the secret code for their true destination escrowed at
some point in the InterNet routing system itself, outside the watching eyes
of internal system security personnel.
Distributed Key Escrow
The Dark Allies were not certain what DKE technology actually referred to,
but it was suspected that many communications contained plain-text stego
which was protected by use of a distributed encryption and decryption key
which could not be compromised except by accessing the systems of all who
held a part of the key.
Unlike the public-private key technology, it seemed to be highly resistant
to attack by gaining control of systems and routers, or any form of
Man-in-the-Middle attacks. It was suspected that they were combined with the
use of a new type of distributed remailer, as well, but this had been
impossible to confirm, as of yet.
Gomez frownedÂ…it looked like InfoWar was going to be a battle, after all.
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One thing that the Magic Circle knows from our long battle with Gomez was
that he is, above all things, thorough.
There is no doubt in our minds that the Dark Allies, upon searching the
rubble of our last safe house, will find the small platinum plaque which
will provide not only a verification of the presence of the Circle of
Eunuchs and the CypherPunks concealed deeply within the heart of WebWorld,
but also a confirmation that:
"The end of our beginnings, will be to arrive from where we started, and to
know it for the first time."
-The Magus
It will not take long for the Dark Allies to notify Gomez, both now and a
century in the past, that the front of the plaque reads:
Trei Transponder © Peter Trei 1997
"Those who do not learn from the future, are doomed to repeat it."
And Gomez will undoubtedly understand, for the first time, the true meaning
of the motto of a small computer company formed in Tucson, Arizona, a
hundred years previously, when he reads, on the back of the plaque:
Built by:
Pearl Harbor Computers
"It Ain't Over 'Till It's Over"
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CypherPunks Write Code
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"The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre"
"WebWorld & the Mythical Circle of Eunuchs"
"InfoWar (Part III of 'The True Story of the InterNet')
Soviet Union Sickle of Eunuchs Secret WebSite
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