"Young Men's Crypto Association" (YMCA) George Gleason raises some interesting points about teaching ethics and morality to nascent hackers, in the hope of heading off some of the darker aspects of anonymous remailers, digital pseudonyms, and the like:

At risk of sounding naive/idealistic, it would seem that since there is no way to block information passing through the net (aside from screening at source, impractical at least!), the solution rests with education of the net-using population. Power carries responsibility in equal measure. We are giving ourselves the power which comes with privacy; we can begin to take responsibility for promoting a sense of ethics in the use of the net. One possible place to start would be at highschool-level computer courses; perhaps with accomplished hackers coming in and giving guest lectures or something... the culture of computer-literate youth can begin to include strong ethical positions regarding respect for the privacy of others, respect for truthfulness, and a position of personal conscience regarding law and authority. Re the latter, this isn't the same thing as blind

I doubt this'll work. You're welcome to try, though. We had this same discussion in a nanotech group I attend (Ted Kaehler's "Assembler Multitude," in Palo Alto), where the concern was about the "grey goo" that could result from replicator development. Several folks recommended that the best approach to handling malicious "nanotech hacking" is _education_, just as George is recommending for what might be called "malicious crypto." The problems are: 1. Moral education (= Christian, in the West) has been tried for centuries, with little apparent effect on murders, rapes, war, and pillage. I won't knock religion here, but the teachings don't seem to have much of an effect. 2. There's usually some fringe, which may be 10% or which may be 1%, which does the _opposite_ of the mainstream teachings. For example, let us suppose George successfully organizes the "Young Men's Crypto Association," or YMCA, to go out to high schools and shopping malls to preach the virtues of crypto temperance, of the evils of computer viruses (a parallel to the crypto stuff talked about here, and an even better example of "hacker morality"), etc. This YMCA will perhaps teach some set of values to perhaps 90% or even 99% of the hacker community it preaches to. But what of the rest? A case can be made that such preaching will _energize_ this minority into action, if only to poke a stick into the eye of society. 3. Practically speaking, how can a handful of we crypto enthusiasts even begin to compete with the teachings of other moralists and religious types? We've got other fish to fry. 4. Finally, many of the "crypto anarchy" views I've been espousing for several years now have been seen by some as grossly immoral and dangerous. Should the YMCA (the Young Men's Crypto Association, remember) argue _against_ such ideas?

obedience, but rather the idea that if there is to be disobedience it needs to be grounded in deeply held personal ethics, as for example in the case of civil disobedience. A strong set of cultural values in these areas might set a tone which discourages mindless negativity and wrecking. Now there will always be those who wreck for thrills.... I don't know how to address that problem except to note that such individuals are hardly stopped today by the threat of prosecution.

I agree with George that some will always "wreck for thrills." What crypto and privacy techniques do is give us some protection against these vandals. Like locks on doors, or sealed envelopes, these techniques protect us a lot better than moral lectures against thievery or fraud. Having said all this, if George decides to go ahead with his version of the YMCA, maybe I'll even stand outside in the cold and ring a bell. --Tim -- .......................................................................... 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: 2^756839 | PGP Public Key: by arrangement.