[3165] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: An Essay on Freedom, Anonymity & Financial
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perry E. Metzger)
Sun Aug 9 18:37:33 1998
To: scs@lokkur.dexter.mi.us (Steve Simmons)
cc: cryptography@c2.net
In-reply-to: Your message of "09 Aug 1998 15:53:42 EDT."
<6qkuo6$ec7$1@lokkur.dexter.mi.us>
Reply-To: perry@piermont.com
Date: Sun, 09 Aug 1998 18:11:51 -0400
From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Steve Simmons writes:
> First, as Perry says but doesn't do, this is a cryptography list and
> Perry's own response is primarily directed to the historical and political
> issues of dictatorship and freedom.
Occassionally, it is valuable to go beyond the technology we develop
and to discuss the implications of the technology we develop. The
reason I'm permitting a short excursion into this is that, although we
all realize that cryptography does have potentially far reaching
implications, we often don't discuss them much.
As cryptographers and technologists with strong influences on the use
of cryptography, I believe we have an obligation to examine the
implications of our actions.
The notion that has been presented to us is, suppose we could use a
cryptographically enhanced digital payment system to track every
transaction, great or small, in order to prevent "crime". I have
chosen to ignore our friend's notion of what the "crimes" even are
that he chooses to mention, or the question of the efficacy in
preventing said crimes of his proposal, and simply chosen to ask what
the side effects of such a mechanism might be.
> Second, freedom is not synonymous with anonymity. Surveillence is not
> synonymous with dictatorship. If all transactions were tracable, it
> would *potentially* be the end of bribery, false accusations of financial
> fraud, the IRS used as a tool of state harassment, etc. Abuse comes when
> one group is allowed to hide actions when another is not.
The problem is, however, that I cannot see how to eliminate a
differential of power between the watchers and the watched. J. Edgar Hoover
may (or may not) have been having a homosexual affair with an
assistant, but he was pretty much certain that even if he used such
information to blackmail people, there was no question that *he* could
be so blackmailed. He was above such concerns.
Let us say we built the Financial Panopticon. Even if we hypothesize
that sufficiently powerful techniques exist to prevent abuse, how can
we assure that such methods will be enforced in all future
governments? As I noted, the issue is that once the technology of the
absolute surveillance state is in place, all that is required is a
*change of attitude* among the governors in order to produce
horrifying results.
Sure, the rules today might say that it is illegal to use the
information in the Insidious Big Brother Database for evil, but the
only thing standing between us and an absolute dictatorship in such a
case is the paper the law is printed on. Once the Coup d'Etat is over,
the law has no meaning. The speed with which political enemies could
be rounded up with the assistance of such a database is frightening --
and I cannot see any mechanism that depends on printing in the
U.S. Code to back it as being particularly helpful. The powerful may
abuse this new panopticon for horrifying purposes, and it is far from
clear that the weak will have anything left to say on the matter from
their jails.
If one develops everything necessary to the establishment of a brutal
absolute dictatorship, one cannot pretend that no one unscrupulous
enough to understand how the mechanisms can be abused towards the
accumulation of absolute power will appear. History is *filled* with
people who have seen such opportunities and taken them.
Were the police always ethical, search warrants would not be
needed. Were prosecutors always ethical, half the rules of evidence
would not be needed. Were the inquisitors always perfect, allowing
torture to extract confessions would be just fine. We know better than
this, however.
Perry
