Because the government is a major consumer of crypto
products, government entities create or approve most of the encryption
standards used in the industry. One of
the key ingredients of crypto technology are random number generators. Getting random numbers from a computer is a
very tricky problem, so the U.S.
government actually publishes random number algorithms created by computer
scientists and government agencies. This
year, the government produced a new standard, which may soon be integrated into
crypto software worldwide. Three of the
four algorithms in the standard are based on industry standards, but one comes
from the National Security Agency. The
NSA's algorithm is more complex and slower than the others, so many people
wondered why the NSA pushed to have it included.
In a recent CRYPTO 2007 conference, some computer scientists
discovered that the algorithm has a possible backdoor key, which allows the
numbers it generates to be predicted.
While we don't know whether the NSA has the key, we can be sure that either
it has the key or it released a dangerously broken standard. (Now that the vulnerability is known, vendors
are unlikely to use it, so the NSA wouldn't have knowingly released a faulty
standard unless it had the key.)
A paranoid person might wonder if having failed to force broken
crypto on us at the hardware level, the government has some kind of nefarious
plan to sneak one in. Simply requiring
that the standard be used by government contractors might be sufficient to get
it adopted by the industry due to its market share. People take much more care in selecting and
testing encryption algorithms than random number generators.
Reassuring answers on this issue are not likely to be forthcoming,
so here are some rules of thumb:
- Real security requires evaluating the whole process, not
just a good encryption algorithm.
- Don't trust a security solution just because it is widely used or
government approved.
- Don't trust a security solution that is isn't open to peer
review.
Welcome to crypto-autonomy.
The purpose of this blog is to discuss the movement commonly known as
"crypto-anarchism," including both theoretical and practical
considerations. I would like to make
this a collaborative blog, so contributions and comments are welcome. With that out of the way, let's talk crypto:
The information age is a harbinger of a social paradigm
shift
Human civilization is currently in the midst of a paradigm
shift, a change in the basic assumptions of the way our society works. This change will be at least as important as
the invention if the printing press and perhaps much more so. The enabling tool behind the transformation
is information technology. More broadly,
it is the automation of intelligence into non-biological automatons. The true meaning and possibility of the
"information age" is only grasped by a few of the most far-reaching of
technologists and futurists. The changes
made possible by the electronic age will transform society in fundamental ways,
and question the very basic premises of government, commerce, intellectual
property, and individual autonomy and identity.
The threat and promise of the information age
Information technology is a tool, and like any tool, it may
be used for good or evil. It brings the possibility
of universal connectedness, privacy, and surveillance. This is both a promise and a threat: we may
finally be free of the threat of an omnipotent State, or we may become victims
of total surveillance and control. Once
a staple of dystopian novels and films, the threat of ever-present electronic
surveillance by the state is no longer just a staple of science fiction - not
with the existence of Carnivore, Echelon, and millions of surveillance cameras. Current surveillance programs are very crude
analogs of the intelligent content analysis that will be possible with further
evolution of technology. Just as banking
companies use artificial intelligence to discover fraudulent transactions in
your credit card record, digital agents will soon be able to sift through audio
and video recordings, purchases, bank records, and electronic communications to
determine the meaning of conversations, build complete profiles on individuals,
and uncover anomalous or suspicious behavior.
Unchecked, such unprecedented control over our lives will turn
individuals into cogs in the machinery of the State, and lead to social and
economic disaster.
The power of the individual
Despite the risk, there are two substantial advantages
enjoyed by individuals over states.
First, free and open societies are inherently more prosperous than
interventionist ones, and total control is likely to lead to total social
collapse in short order. (Though that
would not be very comforting knowledge to those in the midst of the
collapse.) Second, the same technologies
that make ubiquitous surveillance possible also allow ubiquitous secrecy. Individuals finally have the power to keep
their communications private and virtually undecipherable by even the most powerful
computers. As an increasing share of the
values being traded by our civilization takes the form of digital information,
the possibility of maintaining a private life will exist even when physical
freedoms are restricted. With technologies
such as 3D printers and virtual reality, even material values will become
information goods. The
potential will exist for large-scale organization and trade of information
goods beyond the reach of the state. These developments will
make it both more difficult and more tempting for states to restrict trade and
interaction between individuals. As
distant as such a scenario might seem today, present action is necessary to
create and distribute the enabling crypto-technologies, so that when the state awakens
to its full potential, crypto-technology will be too integrated into the social
framework to eradicate.
Substantially legitimate usage is crucial
The key to the success of crypto technology is to make it
ubiquitous. If people only use crypto
when they have something to hide, the use of encryption and anonymity will automatically
be suspicious. However, if everyone uses
crypto because it is automatic and transparent, then not only will forbidden
behavior be easier to hide, but there will be a public outcry at the
(inevitable) attempts to ban crypto and end privacy. This is why it is essential to communicate
the threat of the surveillance state and the promise of practical application
of crypto. It is also important that
programmers make easy-to-use crypto tools and make it the default (or at least
an option) for all electronic communications and transaction. These considerations are my motivation for writing
this.
Why crypto-autonomy?
I prefer the term "crypto-autonomy" to "crypto-anarchism"
because it is more accurate. "Anarchy"
refers to the absence of a government, or alternatively to a lack of any authority. Cipherspace does not require any particular
political system, and it is not opposed to (naturally arising) rules and
authority. Existing communities in
cyberspace have organizational structures which are both democratic and
dictatorial. They key is the freedom of
individuals in cipherspace is, to quote Ludwig von Mises,
"that the individual is in a position to choose the way in which he wants to
integrate himself into the totality of society."
Further posts to this blog will elaborate on the following concepts
and enabling technologies of crypto-autonomy:
Essential concepts of crypto-autonomy
- Privacy: privacy is
the ability of individuals to control information about them, or created by
them.
- Anonymity: is the ability to conceal information that
connects our actions and statements to our material identities. Complete anonymity is impossible, so anonymity
is always relative to the current monitoring technology.
- Plausible deniability:
the ability to conceal the use of crypto, or to connect crypto to a
particular individual. In situations
where even the use of cryptographic technology may be dangerous, steganography
allows information to be encoded in commonplace media such as images. Also, encrypted messages may be hidden inside
an encrypted envelope so that the existence of the information can be plausibly
denied even if forced to reveal the outer message.
- Trust: despite the lack of material identities, reputation
and accountability are essential to any community.
- Cipherspace: a domain in cyberspace where ubiquitous
encryption ensures the anonymity of all participants. For example, Tor.
- Public key infrastructure: an arrangement that allows users
to security identify each other and send encrypted messages by means of a
trusted authority.
- Digital currency: a representation of value that may be tied
to a commodity such as gold, or tradeable for a real-world currency.
Crypto-autonomy and Austrian Economics
The crypto-anarchist movement has been strongly influenced
by free-market thinkers. That's not
surprising - the ciphersphere is in a way, the ultimate market. It is neither the "perfect
competition" model of the neo-classical economists, nor a non-material
realm, but a place where all institutions evolve organically, and coercive
monopolies are very difficult to maintain.