Crypto Takes a Holiday (NYET, Children, etc.)
[remove reflective headgear, cough, adjust nomex underwear, blow whistle..] Good afternoon. Having just percipitated an accidental thread on rockets, I'm not one to talk, really. That's never really stopped me before, of course... However, if someone could tell me a direct relationship between strong crypto and parental values, control of one's offspring, evangelical christianity, and other inherent Rights of Mankind(tm), I would greatly appreciate it... Cheers, Bob Hettinga [check respirator, pull down headgear, resume position behind corrigated steel barricade] ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923
[remove reflective headgear, cough, adjust nomex underwear, blow whistle..]
Good afternoon.
Having just percipitated an accidental thread on rockets, I'm not one to talk, really. That's never really stopped me before, of course...
Chill out. This is a quiet day on Cypherpunks, and clearly a lot of people have views on this. If you'd rather debate whether multiplicative Abelian subgroups contain inverses which can be used for crypto purposes, go ahead.
However, if someone could tell me a direct relationship between strong crypto and parental values, control of one's offspring, evangelical christianity, and other inherent Rights of Mankind(tm), I would greatly appreciate it...
The connection, tenuous (but no more tenuous that a hundred other threads these past two years), is that of source-level or receiver-level blocking is central to many of the proposals here and in general: * Centralized control: Source-level blocking. "We must protect the innocents from X" (Where X is, variously: pro-Christian material, anti-Christian material, pro/con Muslim, Mormon, Jewish, etc. material, violent images, Barney images, sex, anti-sex, etc.). * Decentralized, market control: Receiver-level blocking. "I'll decide what I want to see." Local filter agents, local control. (This includes voluntary services like Prodigy, provided an alternative exists.) Strong crypto makes the second view impossible to stop. Is this enough of a connection? Or should we declare this debate illegal and go back to asking what the best way to generate random numbers is? (I'm not dissin' the random number people...we've just seen that debate too many times, with too little advance progress by people who refuse to check out the Blum-Blum-Shub papers and whatnot.) I doubt I can convince Nathan Zooks that his idea for a world-wide police state to ensure that children are not exposed to anti-Christian material is a lousy idea, or that I can convince Mike Duvos that his idea of mandating access to Nathan's "Funny Mentalist" children so as to de-program them is an equally lousy idea, but I sure do hope I can convince most of you that central control just doesn't work. Let the ideas compete, but don't argue for a Net that is what the Unites States was ostensibly organized to avoid. It ain't perfect, and neither will crypto-anarchy be perfect, but it beats having cops come to my door. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."
In fairness to the original proposal, it's worth remembering that his purpose was not specifically to impose censorship on the net, but rather to protect BBS operators (and net access providers) from legal liability for providing pornographic and other questionable material to children. Granted, his method for doing so did amount to a lot of laws and censor- ship, and I can't agree with that any more than others here. But the problem isn't going to disappear under an onslaught of rhetoric. As I said, I can sympathize with concerned parents, and although my personal philosophies would not support a censorship-based solution, not everyone will feel as There is a movement afoot to hook schools up to the net, part of the general "superhighway" initiative. This is going to raise the public profile of the adult material on the net and increase pressure for ways to limit the access of youngsters to it. One response we can have is to dig in our heels against any censorship, and say, "don't put your school on the net if you don't want your kids reading about bestiality." From my experience, this would be equivalent to saying "don't put schools on the net." That will not be a politically acceptable solution. I really don't know what the ultimate resolution of this conflict will be. IMO, the Internet as it stands today is incompatible with the conventional mores of much of society. Either the Internet will be bowdlerized, or perhaps split into "X-rated" vs "G-rated" sections. Maybe a completely new internetwork is needed, one with more controls and limitations. Then perhaps the current internet could continue to exist in close to its present form. I know that some people are optimistic that the Internet will change society rather than vice versa. They hope that as more and more people join the net that they will become tolerant of the much wider range of views and practices than are common in most people's home towns. But I don't think it will come out this way. Society is a lot bigger than the net, and the character of the net will inevitably change as the membership changes. In some ways this is reminiscent of our earlier debates about whether society would be able to prevent the advent of widespread lawbreaking due to Tim's conception of "crypto anarchy." I have always been skeptical that our software and ideas can really succeed in the face of strong social opposition. For similar reasons I think that the net will be cleansed of pornography if people feel strongly enough about it. So I do see a lot of connections to crypto issues in this debate. Hal
participants (3)
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Hal -
rah＠shipwright.com -
tcmay＠netcom.com