Declan said:
society has instead adopted and then accepted the Internet. It's difficult to be repulsed by something when you use it to share baby pictures with grandparents.
Yes, and we are starting to regulate the hell out of it. Outside of a generic "Internet" sense....crypto is viewed as more threatening -- not simply a conduit, but a means. The next domestic terrorist kaboom! is going to have "bought to you by crypto" stenciled all over it by the US guvmint. Our demographics don't speak of technosophisticates. It --
and its derivative technologies, such as anonymity -- seems to be perceived more as a way to reclaim lost privacy rather than a new and unusual threat. In that sense, it is a conservative technology.
I agree, but you yourself stated that the average American isn't that concerned about privacy and won't purchase privacy enhancing technologies. (In a general privacy sense, I don't see a lot of "privacy reclamation." I do see a lot of notice provisions -- the functional equivalent of placing 99% of Americans in a social-adhesion contract.) I don't think it's conservative. I think it is a new and unusual threat - to the majority of Americans. (This could change, and
certainly the intelligence community is hand-waving about terrorists again,
And the entertainment industry, a power-export, is right behind them. Already we have an attempt to make crime-by-crypto cause for enhanced punishment. Also, the guvmint is puppeting economic espionage/national security in terms of crypto-enabled pirating. Add in the terrorist-porn-crypto triangle... Smells like stigmatization to me. Of course, you have all watched this battle for many years, so you have a longevity of insight that I don't have. Probably just the same-ole-same-ole to you, while it seems more dramatic to me. -aimee.farr@pobox.com