12 ms·

The cypherpunk revolution

352 points by oska 10y ago

wuschel 10y ago
Very lengthy, well written article about the history, political implications and principles of public key encryption. I am a big fan of this technology [1], and still hope that it will be more wide spread among citizens in a secure form. Like freedom of speech, information security is definitely an important pillar of the modern state and empowers citizens. Unfortunately, all attempts to introduce it to the masses and get it right from the security point of view have failed so far. It is a tough balancing act to get right [2]: freedom, convenience, safety - you seemingly can only have two of them. [1] e.g. in the form of https://www.gnupg.org/ https://www.gnupg.org/ [2] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/dan_geer_on_cyb.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/dan_geer_on_c...
jgrahamc 10y ago
Back in October 1944, Koenig had suggested a theoretical way of securing a telephone call by having the recipient of a call add noise to the signal and then subtract it afterward. Only Bob could subtract the noise, because only he knew what he had added in the first place. An eavesdropper, Eve, simply would not know how to modify the noise, because she wouldn’t have access to the noise that had been added to the phone conversation in the first place. Since that's not terribly clear, here's the explanation: https://techpinions.com/an-old-mystery-solved-project-c-43-and-public-key-encryption/18205 https://techpinions.com/an-old-mystery-solved-project-c-43-a...
nxzero 10y ago
Revolution amoung subsets of a population is no revolution. What is need is a mainstream movement to embrace crypto as a fundamental human right. ____________ Sidebar: The article is part of "Passcode" - a field guide to security and privacy from The Christian Science Monitor: http://passcode.csmonitor.com http://passcode.csmonitor.com
- happyslobro 10y ago
  It always starts underground. When it breaks out into the mainstream, it won't even be a movement anymore, it will just be life as usual. That green lock will be gone from the browser, along with any protocols that do not end in "s". The dozen or so communications apps on your phone will be encrypting everything, but not exposing any configuration. And, only one company will sign everyone's public key, because regular users just want to delegate everything to a familiar name. Then we will need another revolution, an underground network of public key signers. With names like 51GNpnk and TheRealBob. One of TheRealBobs will come smoke a joint with you in your parent's basement, and sign your key for $5, so that you can get into the Minecraft party on the weekend.
  - dijit 10y ago
    This is the world I want to live in.
    - dublinben 10y ago
      If you join your local Cryptoparty, you will likely find someone who will sign your public key for free. Check out cryptoparty.in to find the closest one, or some great resources for starting your own.
      - BostonEnginerd 10y ago
        There are a few parties running in the Boston area now. The cryptoparty.in/boston page hasn't been updated in a bit, but there is almost always an cryptoparty on the last Wednesday of the month at Parts and Crafts in Somerville.
  - 20yrs_no_equity 10y ago
    No need to deal with TheRealBob. Blockchains make CAs obsolete.
    - schoen 10y ago
DanBC 10y ago
Here's a short interview by Simon Singh with Clifford Cocks about the bits he did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-xEiOvXux4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-xEiOvXux4 Here's a longer clip of the same interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR0_LPbWxe4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR0_LPbWxe4 Sidenote: that Banksy street art (photo in article) has already been destroyed.
teod 10y ago
Steven Levy's "Crypto" [http://www.stevenlevy.com/index.php/books/crypto http://www.stevenlevy.com/index.php/books/crypto] is a good read on this topic if you're looking for something more in-depth.
- jaffa214525 10y ago
  $23 for a book from 2001 on an evolving topic? Surprised there's not a 2nd edition. Anything that includes the 2000-2010 decade as well?
  - slgeorge 10y ago
    It's extremely well researched and well written, with fantastic insight - well worth 23 USD - highly recommend.
nvk 10y ago
Must see "OpenDime: Real Life Cyberpunk Cred Sticks" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypQHc3EQVfE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypQHc3EQVfE
- cptskippy 10y ago
  That's a interesting idea but damned if I'm going to stick a random USB device into my computer.
  - juckele 10y ago
    Also, I'm not sure how they create the private key, but shouldn't it be possible to use the same file twice, giving both of them the same private key? Break the first one, load up bitcoins on the second one, use it as a payment, then use the now known private key to extract the funds before your victim can, and essentially pass a bad check...
    - nvk 10y ago
      Not possible it mixes in user generate entropy https://opendime.com/#faq https://opendime.com/#faq
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    Maybe that's how you demonstrate your "creds"? "You want me to do what with that USB? In my port? Go away."
    - cryptolect 10y ago
      Maybe an NFC implementation would be more acceptable.
      - M_Grey 10y ago
        I don't know, I kind of like the notion of offering someone an USB killer and if they put in into their machine, you never trust them again (cryptographically or otherwise). Jokes aside though, yes, I think NFC would be less likely to be dangerous to your computer, but maybe easier to eavesdrop on?
walterbell 10y ago
These days, it's challenging to minimize the amount of information given to commercial communication vendors. At present, https://Wire.com https://Wire.com (from Skype's founder) is the only cross-platform and easily usable messaging service that: - has E2E encryption [0] of text, image, audio, video - does not require phone # [1] - does not require address book upload - is not ad-supported - has open-sourced code for their desktop and mobile clients - has single msg editing & deletion [0] derived from the Signal protocol, implemented in Rust, needs more external review/audit, https://wire.com/privacy/ https://wire.com/privacy/ [1] using a desktop browser, register at http://app.wire.com http://app.wire.com with email, then login to mobile app
- ashitlerferad 10y ago
  Are there any that do metadata obscurity?
  - walterbell 10y ago
    Would love to know. Wire reduces metadata, e.g. no phone number and no social network/contact graph for triangulation. You can use a throwaway email to register, that is never used in other contexts. That leaves metadata for device key fingerprints, Wire account ID and public IP addresses. Wire also uses WebRTC for some communication, not sure about the metadata implications of that protocol.
  - dublinben 10y ago
    You would need to use a messaging app that routes your traffic over Tor, or some other anonymizing network. Some options like Ricochet or Tor Messenger are being developed.
  - Natanael_L 10y ago
    I2P Messenger, I2P's Bote mail
- moreira 10y ago
  > Wire is not financed by ads. Your personal data or the content of your conversations are never sold or rented to anyone, and it will not be used for any third party advertising. Does anyone know how it's financed? Without a clear business model, it's hard to trust anyone these days. If it was an open source project just for the sake of having an open source solution, that'd be one thing, but the website mentions Jobs, and has a web-based app run by them, so there's real money being invested here, and at some point they'll have to reap profits from it.
20yrs_no_equity 10y ago
I've been developing software professionally since the 1980s, when I had to build a computer from scratch. I've seen these three waves first hand- personal computers, now in your palm, the internet, now ubiquitous with cell networks, and finally crypto. The third has not yet become mainstream. I will say this- we are on the verge of the crypto revolution. I have never before seen so much energy and effort, and finally, money in the crypto sphere. In large part because now there is cryptographic money (eg: bitcoin et al.) For those of you who think that the startup scene has become lame where you're just building apps to sell advertising, you're missing out. The thing about the crypto revolution is that it is not nearly as obvious. Internet and PCs were obviously great in the early days- great for everyone. Crypto is harder, has a learning curve for consumers and until that's eliminated it's easy to think that it will go nowhere in the same way that pgp has effectively gone nowhere for 20 years. Much in the way that we've given up on "artificial intelligence" and made great strides in machine learning.. crypto is on the edge. It's the place you want to be.
clydethefrog 10y ago
Talking about cyberphunk / cyberpunk culture, why does it feel that the popular definition and approach nowadays is a defeatist (or sometimes even glorifying) attitude to an unavoidable future of megacorporations and post-industrial dystopia, instead of celebrating the punk side of it? Or am I just checking out the wrong corners like /r/cyberpunk?
- walterbell 10y ago
  Because paid speech is now pervasive on social networks, especially on topics with commercial consequences, from a variety of competing actors with deep pockets and diverse agendas. Punk stakeholders likely cannot compete in either paid speech or mass audience reach for subversive lyrics. Readers will gradually learn how to select writers with independent perspectives, filtering out groupspeak, as they have learned to do with advertising. Edit: manually curated Twitter whitelists, connected to Flipboard, can provide an efficient view of reader-prioritized, coherent perspectives. We need better whitelist support on discussion services.
  - knowaveragejoe 10y ago
    Can you quantify what "pervasive" means in this sense?
    - walterbell 10y ago
      "Pervasive" is within the context of high-profile topics. One academic study was "Grassroots for Hire", https://www.amazon.com/Grassroots-Hire-Consultants-American-Democracy/dp/1107619017 https://www.amazon.com/Grassroots-Hire-Consultants-American-... For DIY quantification, create a spreadsheet of userids, threads and manually tagged perspectives from your favorite social network or discussion forum. Then apply open-source tools for social network graph analysis of node interactions. With this data, apply exclusion filters to targeted clusters of userids, then re-read the "mass opinion". Palantir has proprietary software for network influence analysis, but many algorithms and OSS tools are available from academia.
  - 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
DonHopkins 10y ago
Wired Issue 1.02 | May/Jun 1993 | Crypto Rebels | John Gilmore Challenges the NSA [1] What if Gilmore wins, and the NSA is forced to reveal all but the most secret information about cryptography? Would national security be compromised, as the NSA claims? "I don't think so," says Gilmore. "We are not asking to threaten the national security. We're asking to discard a Cold War bureaucratic idea of national security which is obsolete. My response to the NSA is: Show us. Show the public how your ability to violate the privacy of any citizen has prevented a major disaster. They're abridging the freedom and privacy of all citizens -- to defend us against a bogeyman that they will not explain. The decision to literally trade away our privacy is one that must be made by the whole society, not made unilaterally by a military spy agency." [1] https://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/1.02/crypto.rebels_pr.html https://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/1.02/crypto.rebels_p...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- cicero 10y ago
  I think I read this when it first came out. I loved Wired back then.
cryptolect 10y ago
Amusing to note that a site hosting a detailed article on the "cypherpunk revolution" doesn't support https.
__jal 10y ago
Tim May wrote a (very long) "FAQ" for the Cypherpunks that may be of interest to folks who are interested in this sort of thing: http://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.html http://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.h... The Cypherpunks list was remarkable for a time. Very high-volume, fractious, competitive, vicious, with at least one participant going to jail for a long time due to acting on some of the ideas. And very, very full of ideas ranging from mind-candy to very dangerous. May's Cyphernomicon[1] is really his interpretation of what was going on, colored heavily by his politics. Paraphrasing the joke, ask three cypherpunks what the word meant and you'd get four answers. But the document is an in-depth look at some of the implications of cryptography, a look at some deeply non-mainstream politics, and a contemporaneous recounting of the politics and technology development of a really interesting period of time and a really interesting mailing list that had, I think, a surprisingly outsized (if hard to pin down) role in shaping security policy[2]. [1] Stephenson's Cryptonomicon came out at roughly the same time as May's work, and it was one of those funny little accidents that the name collided. [2] I do think the Clipper chip fiasco and the ITAR changes wouldn't have played out the same way without the collaboration that happened on the list, and it was fertile ground that lead to several companies and weirder entities being formed.
- IvyMike 10y ago
  Whatever happened to Tim May? The wikipedia page says "he retired in 2003", but did he really just drop off the net completely? Cursory searches turn up very little. Edit: of course as soon as I post I then find some recent(ish) posts by him here: http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/user/3908/track http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/user/3908/track
- DonHopkins 10y ago
  Graffiti found at 16th/Harrison (just outside Wired office), San Francisco, Mar/Apr 94. Photo by Tom Jennings: tomj@wps.com [1] STOP CLIPPER Fuck the NSA. [1] http://imgur.com/a/npfL7 http://imgur.com/a/npfL7
  - __jal 10y ago
    WiReD was located just off of South Park back then.
j2kun 10y ago
> Back in October 1944, Koenig had suggested a theoretical way of securing a telephone call by having the recipient of a call add noise to the signal and then subtract it afterward. Only Bob could subtract the noise, because only he knew what he had added in the first place. An eavesdropper, Eve, simply would not know how to modify the noise, because she wouldn’t have access to the noise that had been added to the phone conversation in the first place. The scheme is called a one-time pad, and while it might be considered impractical, it was definitely used successfully. In fact Alan Turing apparently contributed to one such device: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGSALY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGSALY
- j2kun 10y ago
  Interestingly, according to Wikipedia the SIGSALY was in production before Koenig "invented" the technique. And according to the one-time pad page, one-time pad was first theoretically invented in 1882 by Frank Miller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad
  - jgrahamc 10y ago
    You should read the article and my comment above. This was not a one time pad as they was no distribution of a pad. Only one side added and removed the noise.
    - j2kun 10y ago
      The article you posted does not seem to contradict what I said, but rather support it. > The Project X method required courier distribution of noise tracks on phonograph records. Because the noise had to be as long as the speech it masked and each track could only be used once–it was the audio equivalent of a Vernam cipher or a one-time pad–the system was exceedingly cumbersome.
      - jgrahamc 10y ago
        You don't appear to have read it.
neaden 10y ago
A good read but I'm struck by how politically naive so many of the crypto crowd seems to be. The idea of escaping the government by going into cyberspace is nonsenical on it's head. You are a body. You buy things for your body. You go do body things all the time. Besides buying software, ebooks, and movies everything else you buy with something like bitcoin is physical and cannot be encrypted. Even with Lackey living on Sealand on San Fransico time had to be buying canned food, diesel, etc. If any government had been interested in what he was doing it would have been trivially easy to keep tabs on him. ETA: This quote from May especially struck me “Would Hitler and Himmler have used ‘key recovery’ to determine who the Jews were communicating with so they could all be rounded up and killed?” The Nazi's wouldn't have really cared what Jewish people were saying because they just wanted to kill them. Similarly if we think of something like the Soviet Union while cryptography would have undeniably been helpful for dissidents for coordination and getting ideas out ultimately you still need to have people on the streets or in office to get anything changed.
- cortesoft 10y ago
  I think you have an interesting point about still having to live in the real world, but I don't find your argument about Hitler and the Jews persuasive at all. Just because cryptography isn't useful for that particular case doesn't make it not useful for other cases; no one is arguing crypto will fix all government abuses. It doesn't mean it isn't a useful tool, though, in fighting corrupt governments.
  - neaden 10y ago
    Agreed but May is the one who brought up the Hitler comparison. I think that encryption is minimally effective in cases of actual totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or North Korea. They have too much control, secret police, informers, etc. that encryption doesn't represent a viable way of effecting change in government. In those types of situations your neighbors can just report you for being a dissident and the Stasi can just carry you away in the middle of the night or bug your entire home. In countries like the USA, or even Apartheid South Africa it can have a much bigger role in organizing protests and other activities.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
Ah yes, Cryptowars I :-) As part of my involvement in the Java project I was building crypto classes that you could call from other objects. The NSA^h^h^hDepartment of Commerce was concerned. A couple of the things that were patented out of that project had to be cleared by them. Very odd experience. The idea that a piece of software could not be legally exported from the US but could be fetched via FTP from Italy was pretty amazing in its dissonance. All of the representatives of the federal government I ended up interacting with all understood that the battle was "lost" but they were doing their part to slow or chill research or distribution.
- daeken 10y ago
  I know this is a content-free comment, but I've been following your comments here for years now, and you always have interesting stories. Thank you for contributing!
kyled 10y ago
"Public-key encryption was revolutionary for a simple reason. It solved the age-old security problem of key distribution." Not by itself. That's what protocols are used for. A weak protocol would allow for an attacker to intercept public keys, allowing the attacker to mitm communications.

352 points by oska 10y ago

Very lengthy, well written article about the history, political implications and principles of public key encryption. I am a big fan of this technology [1], and still hope that it will be more wide spread among citizens in a secure form. Like freedom of speech, information security is definitely an important pillar of the modern state and empowers citizens. Unfortunately, all attempts to introduce it to the masses and get it right from the security point of view have failed so far. It is a tough balancing act to get right [2]: freedom, convenience, safety - you seemingly can only have two of them. [1] e.g. in the form of https://www.gnupg.org/ https://www.gnupg.org/ [2] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/dan_geer_on_cyb.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/dan_geer_on_c...

jgrahamc 10y ago

Back in October 1944, Koenig had suggested a theoretical way of securing a telephone call by having the recipient of a call add noise to the signal and then subtract it afterward. Only Bob could subtract the noise, because only he knew what he had added in the first place. An eavesdropper, Eve, simply would not know how to modify the noise, because she wouldn’t have access to the noise that had been added to the phone conversation in the first place. Since that's not terribly clear, here's the explanation: https://techpinions.com/an-old-mystery-solved-project-c-43-and-public-key-encryption/18205 https://techpinions.com/an-old-mystery-solved-project-c-43-a...

nxzero 10y ago

Revolution amoung subsets of a population is no revolution. What is need is a mainstream movement to embrace crypto as a fundamental human right. ____________ Sidebar: The article is part of "Passcode" - a field guide to security and privacy from The Christian Science Monitor: http://passcode.csmonitor.com http://passcode.csmonitor.com

happyslobro 10y ago
It always starts underground. When it breaks out into the mainstream, it won't even be a movement anymore, it will just be life as usual. That green lock will be gone from the browser, along with any protocols that do not end in "s". The dozen or so communications apps on your phone will be encrypting everything, but not exposing any configuration. And, only one company will sign everyone's public key, because regular users just want to delegate everything to a familiar name. Then we will need another revolution, an underground network of public key signers. With names like 51GNpnk and TheRealBob. One of TheRealBobs will come smoke a joint with you in your parent's basement, and sign your key for $5, so that you can get into the Minecraft party on the weekend.
- dijit 10y ago
  This is the world I want to live in.
  - dublinben 10y ago
    If you join your local Cryptoparty, you will likely find someone who will sign your public key for free. Check out cryptoparty.in to find the closest one, or some great resources for starting your own.
    - BostonEnginerd 10y ago
      There are a few parties running in the Boston area now. The cryptoparty.in/boston page hasn't been updated in a bit, but there is almost always an cryptoparty on the last Wednesday of the month at Parts and Crafts in Somerville.
- 20yrs_no_equity 10y ago
  No need to deal with TheRealBob. Blockchains make CAs obsolete.
  - schoen 10y ago

DanBC 10y ago

Here's a short interview by Simon Singh with Clifford Cocks about the bits he did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-xEiOvXux4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-xEiOvXux4 Here's a longer clip of the same interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR0_LPbWxe4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR0_LPbWxe4 Sidenote: that Banksy street art (photo in article) has already been destroyed.

teod 10y ago

Steven Levy's "Crypto" [http://www.stevenlevy.com/index.php/books/crypto http://www.stevenlevy.com/index.php/books/crypto] is a good read on this topic if you're looking for something more in-depth.

jaffa214525 10y ago
$23 for a book from 2001 on an evolving topic? Surprised there's not a 2nd edition. Anything that includes the 2000-2010 decade as well?
- slgeorge 10y ago
  It's extremely well researched and well written, with fantastic insight - well worth 23 USD - highly recommend.

nvk 10y ago

Must see "OpenDime: Real Life Cyberpunk Cred Sticks" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypQHc3EQVfE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypQHc3EQVfE

cptskippy 10y ago
That's a interesting idea but damned if I'm going to stick a random USB device into my computer.
- juckele 10y ago
  Also, I'm not sure how they create the private key, but shouldn't it be possible to use the same file twice, giving both of them the same private key? Break the first one, load up bitcoins on the second one, use it as a payment, then use the now known private key to extract the funds before your victim can, and essentially pass a bad check...
  - nvk 10y ago
    Not possible it mixes in user generate entropy https://opendime.com/#faq https://opendime.com/#faq
- M_Grey 10y ago
  Maybe that's how you demonstrate your "creds"? "You want me to do what with that USB? In my port? Go away."
  - cryptolect 10y ago
    Maybe an NFC implementation would be more acceptable.
    - M_Grey 10y ago
      I don't know, I kind of like the notion of offering someone an USB killer and if they put in into their machine, you never trust them again (cryptographically or otherwise). Jokes aside though, yes, I think NFC would be less likely to be dangerous to your computer, but maybe easier to eavesdrop on?

walterbell 10y ago

These days, it's challenging to minimize the amount of information given to commercial communication vendors. At present, https://Wire.com https://Wire.com (from Skype's founder) is the only cross-platform and easily usable messaging service that: - has E2E encryption [0] of text, image, audio, video - does not require phone # [1] - does not require address book upload - is not ad-supported - has open-sourced code for their desktop and mobile clients - has single msg editing & deletion [0] derived from the Signal protocol, implemented in Rust, needs more external review/audit, https://wire.com/privacy/ https://wire.com/privacy/ [1] using a desktop browser, register at http://app.wire.com http://app.wire.com with email, then login to mobile app

ashitlerferad 10y ago
Are there any that do metadata obscurity?
- walterbell 10y ago
  Would love to know. Wire reduces metadata, e.g. no phone number and no social network/contact graph for triangulation. You can use a throwaway email to register, that is never used in other contexts. That leaves metadata for device key fingerprints, Wire account ID and public IP addresses. Wire also uses WebRTC for some communication, not sure about the metadata implications of that protocol.
- dublinben 10y ago
  You would need to use a messaging app that routes your traffic over Tor, or some other anonymizing network. Some options like Ricochet or Tor Messenger are being developed.
- Natanael_L 10y ago
  I2P Messenger, I2P's Bote mail
moreira 10y ago
> Wire is not financed by ads. Your personal data or the content of your conversations are never sold or rented to anyone, and it will not be used for any third party advertising. Does anyone know how it's financed? Without a clear business model, it's hard to trust anyone these days. If it was an open source project just for the sake of having an open source solution, that'd be one thing, but the website mentions Jobs, and has a web-based app run by them, so there's real money being invested here, and at some point they'll have to reap profits from it.

20yrs_no_equity 10y ago

I've been developing software professionally since the 1980s, when I had to build a computer from scratch. I've seen these three waves first hand- personal computers, now in your palm, the internet, now ubiquitous with cell networks, and finally crypto. The third has not yet become mainstream. I will say this- we are on the verge of the crypto revolution. I have never before seen so much energy and effort, and finally, money in the crypto sphere. In large part because now there is cryptographic money (eg: bitcoin et al.) For those of you who think that the startup scene has become lame where you're just building apps to sell advertising, you're missing out. The thing about the crypto revolution is that it is not nearly as obvious. Internet and PCs were obviously great in the early days- great for everyone. Crypto is harder, has a learning curve for consumers and until that's eliminated it's easy to think that it will go nowhere in the same way that pgp has effectively gone nowhere for 20 years. Much in the way that we've given up on "artificial intelligence" and made great strides in machine learning.. crypto is on the edge. It's the place you want to be.

clydethefrog 10y ago

Talking about cyberphunk / cyberpunk culture, why does it feel that the popular definition and approach nowadays is a defeatist (or sometimes even glorifying) attitude to an unavoidable future of megacorporations and post-industrial dystopia, instead of celebrating the punk side of it? Or am I just checking out the wrong corners like /r/cyberpunk?

walterbell 10y ago
Because paid speech is now pervasive on social networks, especially on topics with commercial consequences, from a variety of competing actors with deep pockets and diverse agendas. Punk stakeholders likely cannot compete in either paid speech or mass audience reach for subversive lyrics. Readers will gradually learn how to select writers with independent perspectives, filtering out groupspeak, as they have learned to do with advertising. Edit: manually curated Twitter whitelists, connected to Flipboard, can provide an efficient view of reader-prioritized, coherent perspectives. We need better whitelist support on discussion services.
- knowaveragejoe 10y ago
  Can you quantify what "pervasive" means in this sense?
  - walterbell 10y ago
    "Pervasive" is within the context of high-profile topics. One academic study was "Grassroots for Hire", https://www.amazon.com/Grassroots-Hire-Consultants-American-Democracy/dp/1107619017 https://www.amazon.com/Grassroots-Hire-Consultants-American-... For DIY quantification, create a spreadsheet of userids, threads and manually tagged perspectives from your favorite social network or discussion forum. Then apply open-source tools for social network graph analysis of node interactions. With this data, apply exclusion filters to targeted clusters of userids, then re-read the "mass opinion". Palantir has proprietary software for network influence analysis, but many algorithms and OSS tools are available from academia.
- 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

DonHopkins 10y ago

Wired Issue 1.02 | May/Jun 1993 | Crypto Rebels | John Gilmore Challenges the NSA [1] What if Gilmore wins, and the NSA is forced to reveal all but the most secret information about cryptography? Would national security be compromised, as the NSA claims? "I don't think so," says Gilmore. "We are not asking to threaten the national security. We're asking to discard a Cold War bureaucratic idea of national security which is obsolete. My response to the NSA is: Show us. Show the public how your ability to violate the privacy of any citizen has prevented a major disaster. They're abridging the freedom and privacy of all citizens -- to defend us against a bogeyman that they will not explain. The decision to literally trade away our privacy is one that must be made by the whole society, not made unilaterally by a military spy agency." [1] https://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/1.02/crypto.rebels_pr.html https://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/1.02/crypto.rebels_p...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
cicero 10y ago
I think I read this when it first came out. I loved Wired back then.

cryptolect 10y ago

Amusing to note that a site hosting a detailed article on the "cypherpunk revolution" doesn't support https.

__jal 10y ago

Tim May wrote a (very long) "FAQ" for the Cypherpunks that may be of interest to folks who are interested in this sort of thing: http://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.html http://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.h... The Cypherpunks list was remarkable for a time. Very high-volume, fractious, competitive, vicious, with at least one participant going to jail for a long time due to acting on some of the ideas. And very, very full of ideas ranging from mind-candy to very dangerous. May's Cyphernomicon[1] is really his interpretation of what was going on, colored heavily by his politics. Paraphrasing the joke, ask three cypherpunks what the word meant and you'd get four answers. But the document is an in-depth look at some of the implications of cryptography, a look at some deeply non-mainstream politics, and a contemporaneous recounting of the politics and technology development of a really interesting period of time and a really interesting mailing list that had, I think, a surprisingly outsized (if hard to pin down) role in shaping security policy[2]. [1] Stephenson's Cryptonomicon came out at roughly the same time as May's work, and it was one of those funny little accidents that the name collided. [2] I do think the Clipper chip fiasco and the ITAR changes wouldn't have played out the same way without the collaboration that happened on the list, and it was fertile ground that lead to several companies and weirder entities being formed.

IvyMike 10y ago
Whatever happened to Tim May? The wikipedia page says "he retired in 2003", but did he really just drop off the net completely? Cursory searches turn up very little. Edit: of course as soon as I post I then find some recent(ish) posts by him here: http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/user/3908/track http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/user/3908/track
DonHopkins 10y ago
Graffiti found at 16th/Harrison (just outside Wired office), San Francisco, Mar/Apr 94. Photo by Tom Jennings: tomj@wps.com [1] STOP CLIPPER Fuck the NSA. [1] http://imgur.com/a/npfL7 http://imgur.com/a/npfL7
- __jal 10y ago
  WiReD was located just off of South Park back then.

j2kun 10y ago

> Back in October 1944, Koenig had suggested a theoretical way of securing a telephone call by having the recipient of a call add noise to the signal and then subtract it afterward. Only Bob could subtract the noise, because only he knew what he had added in the first place. An eavesdropper, Eve, simply would not know how to modify the noise, because she wouldn’t have access to the noise that had been added to the phone conversation in the first place. The scheme is called a one-time pad, and while it might be considered impractical, it was definitely used successfully. In fact Alan Turing apparently contributed to one such device: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGSALY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIGSALY

j2kun 10y ago
Interestingly, according to Wikipedia the SIGSALY was in production before Koenig "invented" the technique. And according to the one-time pad page, one-time pad was first theoretically invented in 1882 by Frank Miller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-time_pad
- jgrahamc 10y ago
  You should read the article and my comment above. This was not a one time pad as they was no distribution of a pad. Only one side added and removed the noise.
  - j2kun 10y ago
    The article you posted does not seem to contradict what I said, but rather support it. > The Project X method required courier distribution of noise tracks on phonograph records. Because the noise had to be as long as the speech it masked and each track could only be used once–it was the audio equivalent of a Vernam cipher or a one-time pad–the system was exceedingly cumbersome.
    - jgrahamc 10y ago
      You don't appear to have read it.

neaden 10y ago

A good read but I'm struck by how politically naive so many of the crypto crowd seems to be. The idea of escaping the government by going into cyberspace is nonsenical on it's head. You are a body. You buy things for your body. You go do body things all the time. Besides buying software, ebooks, and movies everything else you buy with something like bitcoin is physical and cannot be encrypted. Even with Lackey living on Sealand on San Fransico time had to be buying canned food, diesel, etc. If any government had been interested in what he was doing it would have been trivially easy to keep tabs on him. ETA: This quote from May especially struck me “Would Hitler and Himmler have used ‘key recovery’ to determine who the Jews were communicating with so they could all be rounded up and killed?” The Nazi's wouldn't have really cared what Jewish people were saying because they just wanted to kill them. Similarly if we think of something like the Soviet Union while cryptography would have undeniably been helpful for dissidents for coordination and getting ideas out ultimately you still need to have people on the streets or in office to get anything changed.

cortesoft 10y ago
I think you have an interesting point about still having to live in the real world, but I don't find your argument about Hitler and the Jews persuasive at all. Just because cryptography isn't useful for that particular case doesn't make it not useful for other cases; no one is arguing crypto will fix all government abuses. It doesn't mean it isn't a useful tool, though, in fighting corrupt governments.
- neaden 10y ago
  Agreed but May is the one who brought up the Hitler comparison. I think that encryption is minimally effective in cases of actual totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or North Korea. They have too much control, secret police, informers, etc. that encryption doesn't represent a viable way of effecting change in government. In those types of situations your neighbors can just report you for being a dissident and the Stasi can just carry you away in the middle of the night or bug your entire home. In countries like the USA, or even Apartheid South Africa it can have a much bigger role in organizing protests and other activities.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

Ah yes, Cryptowars I :-) As part of my involvement in the Java project I was building crypto classes that you could call from other objects. The NSA^h^h^hDepartment of Commerce was concerned. A couple of the things that were patented out of that project had to be cleared by them. Very odd experience. The idea that a piece of software could not be legally exported from the US but could be fetched via FTP from Italy was pretty amazing in its dissonance. All of the representatives of the federal government I ended up interacting with all understood that the battle was "lost" but they were doing their part to slow or chill research or distribution.

daeken 10y ago
I know this is a content-free comment, but I've been following your comments here for years now, and you always have interesting stories. Thank you for contributing!

kyled 10y ago

"Public-key encryption was revolutionary for a simple reason. It solved the age-old security problem of key distribution." Not by itself. That's what protocols are used for. A weak protocol would allow for an attacker to intercept public keys, allowing the attacker to mitm communications.