Moral Crypto

[Tim May]

On Saturday, September 1, 2001, at 01:30 PM, Nomen Nescio wrote:

> On 31 Aug 2001, at 12:13, georgemw at speakeasy.net wrote:
>> On 31 Aug 2001, at 19:50, Nomen Nescio wrote:
>>> This means that the operators
>>> choose to whom they will market and sell their services.
>>
>> Here I disagree completely.  I think in a properly designed
>> anonymity system the users will be, well, anonymous, and
>> it should be impossible to tell any more about them than that they
>> pay their bills on time. Certainly most potential users would balk at
>> requirements that they prove who they were and justify their desire
>> to use such a system, since that would tend to defeat the purpose.
>
> Yes and no.  The users aren't all that anonymous, or they wouldn't need
> anonymous technologies, would they?  The remailer network sees where
> this message originates.  If you use Zero Knowledge software, their
> network knows exactly who is using it at any time.  If a digital cash
> bank came into existence, payments transferred into the digital system
> from outside would largely be from identified sources.

What can I say? You clearly don't understand:

-- how remailer _networks_ work (Hint: nested encryption...all the first 
remailer sees when he opens a message is an encrypted message he can't 
read and instructions on which remailer to send it to next, and so on. 
Only if most/all remailers collaborate can the route be followed by 
them.)

-- how Freedom works (Hint: They say that even they cannot know who is 
using it, except in terms of network usage. Which with cover traffic, 
forwarding of other traffic, dummy messages, etc., means the fact that 
Alice was using the network during a period of time does not mean they 
know which exit messages are hers.)

-- blinding. (Hint: That Alice deposits money into a digital bank, and 
is identified by the bank, does not mean the bank knows who received 
digital money from Alice, because Alice unblinds the note before 
spending it--or redeeming it.)

> The real issue is the clause above about "market and sell".  This was
> the original point raised by Tim May: what markets do we select?

You have several times attempted to corral me into your "which markets 
are moral, which do we focus on?" point.

I only cited several obvious examples (discussed _many_ times here, 
e.g., the distribution of birth control info in Islamic countries, e.g., 
dissidents in a corrupt regime (ZOG), etc.) because some of the 
newcomers seem so unimaginative and ill-informed that they were whining 
about how untraceability only helps criminals, perverts, and terrrorists.

This does _not_ mean I have issued any kind of call for people to work 
on "moral" uses, and I wish you would stop using my name in support of 
your moral crusade.

One man's supplier of the herb is another man's drug dealer. One man's 
erotica creator is another man's pervert. One man's freedom fighter is 
another man's terrorist. These are all obvious points discussed many 
hundreds of times on this list.

> His whiteboard exercise teaches that you need to identify, select and
> target particular markets which make sense.  And if you care about the
> world you are creating, that's where the moral issue comes in.

It means the markets are further out from the "dollar ghetto" than many 
people think. And the further out from the origin (0,0), the more heated 
the debate becomes about terrorists, perverts, tax evaders, and so on.

>> I don't think it serves
>> any purpose to discuss who constitute "valiant freedom fighters
>> resisting a tyrannical government" and who are "bloody terrorist
>> fanatics attempting to overthrow a benign legitimate government
>> and replace it wth a worse one" in this forum.  We may have strong
>> opinions on this matter as individuals, but it is completely
>> unreasonable to expect us to come to any kind of consensus as a
>> group.
>
> Nonsense.  Most participants in this forum DO share common philosophical
> goals: the preservation and enhancement of individual freedom via
> technological means.  This is our common heritage.  People make moral
> judgements every single day on this list based on exactly this 
> framework.
> And it is this moral view which tells us that bin Laden and his 
> terrorist
> groups are not the market which we should target in order to advance
> these goals.
>

How about McVeigh? How about The Real IRA? How about John Brown? How 
about Patrick Henry/ How about Cuban exiles? (By the way, everyone 
should know about the time an anti-Castro group blew up a Cuban 
airliner. Terrorists, freedom fighters, or just a bunch who wants to be 
in control?)

I spoke of dissident-grade untraceability, identical to pedophile-grade 
untraceability. Not to support either dissdents or pedophiles, but to 
provide a handle on just how good this untraceability must be so as to 
protect dissidents from arrest and execution and pedophiles from arrest 
and imprisonment (or execution in Islamic regimes).

> Surely not.  Morality plays a part in everything we do.  We have goals
> in common.  We should structure our efforts so that they are in 
> accordance
> with our highest goals.  Having principles is nothing to be ashamed of.
> We all have them, and we should be proud of that.


 From your words, I doubt you support the same goals I support.

In any case, please stop invoking my name in support of your "moral 
crypto" points.


--Tim May