"arthurc@crl.com" "Arthur Chandler" wrote:
It jarred me to see someone so blithely planning to enter into the world of international finance from an essentially "outsider" frame of reference. As impressed as I was by the range and depth of Eric's understanding of the technical aspects of encryption, I have the feeling that setting up such a revolutionary scheme -- which would threaten both traditional banking enterprises and the governments that monitor and tax them -- is bound to encounter opposition much more massive and sophisticated than he indicated. To be fair, he could only talk about the high points of his plans in the context of the afternoon talk. But I kept having flashbacks to the1960s and 70s, when counterculture groups laid intricate plans to overwhelm or endrun "the system." Put bluntly, any plans to enter international finance without a substantial component aimed at lining up political and traditional financial clout seems to me to be doomed to the dustbin of visionary schemes. After the smoke clears, we are far more likely to see Chase Manhattan with a platoon of hired cryptologists than EFF or Cypherpunks wheeling and dealing on a global scale.
The reason such "counterculture" plans didn't work is because they are hard to do. They are a pain. People may talk about them, but they aren't that anxious to actually "live underground." They are also hard to coordinate. It is easier to just get a job and live a normal life. Even with PGP, more people talk about it than use it on a regular basis. I've even been flamed for sending people PGP messages, even when those people promote their PGP keys in their .sigs! All we have to do is make it technically easy. We are tool makers. Make the tools and it will happen. As for opposition from governments and the banking establishment, governments are right now being held hostage by capital. If they don't do what capital wants, capital gets up and leaves. East Germany used the Berlin Wall to contain its capital. When the wall came down, the capital left. The forces against us may seem overwhelming, but we have one huge advantage. They are limited to a specific region, or at least to one country. International collaboration is difficult and slow for those who enforce the status quo. Data crosses borders with impunity, and short of cutting all the wires and turning a country into Albania, there isn't much the governments can do about it. --- MikeIngle@delphi.com