Kontakt
📞 +420 777 777 777
📞 +420 777 777 777
A specter is haunting the modern world, the specter of crypto anarchy.
Computer technology is on the verge of providing the ability for individuals and groups to
communicate and interact with each other in a totally anonymous manner. Two persons may exchange
messages, conduct business, and negotiate electronic contracts without ever knowing the True Name,
or legal identity, of the other. Interactions over networks will be untraceable, via extensive
re-routing of encrypted packets and tamper-proof boxes which implement cryptographic protocols with
nearly perfect assurance against any tampering. Reputations will be of central importance, far more
important in dealings than even the credit ratings of today. These developments will alter
completely the nature of government regulation, the ability to tax and control economic
interactions, the ability to keep information secret, and will even alter the nature of trust and
reputation.
The technology for this revolution--and it surely will be both a social and economic revolution--has
existed in theory for the past decade. The methods are based upon public-key encryption,
zero-knowledge interactive proof systems, and various software protocols for interaction,
authentication, and verification. The focus has until now been on academic conferences in Europe and
the U.S., conferences monitored closely by the National Security Agency. But only recently have
computer networks and personal computers attained sufficient speed to make the ideas practically
realizable. And the next ten years will bring enough additional speed to make the ideas economically
feasible and essentially unstoppable. High-speed networks, ISDN, tamper-proof boxes, smart cards,
satellites, Ku-band transmitters, multi-MIPS personal computers, and encryption chips now under
development will be some of the enabling technologies.
The State will of course try to slow or halt the spread of this technology, citing national security
concerns, use of the technology by drug dealers and tax evaders, and fears of societal
disintegration. Many of these concerns will be valid; crypto anarchy will allow national secrets to
be trade freely and will allow illicit and stolen materials to be traded. An anonymous computerized
market will even make possible abhorrent markets for assassinations and extortion. Various criminal
and foreign elements will be active users of CryptoNet. But this will not halt the spread of crypto
anarchy.
Just as the technology of printing altered and reduced the power of medieval guilds and the social
power structure, so too will cryptologic methods fundamentally alter the nature of corporations and
of government interference in economic transactions. Combined with emerging information markets,
crypto anarchy will create a liquid market for any and all material which can be put into words and
pictures. And just as a seemingly minor invention like barbed wire made possible the fencing-off of
vast ranches and farms, thus altering forever the concepts of land and property rights in the
frontier West, so too will the seemingly minor discovery out of an arcane branch of mathematics come
to be the wire clippers which dismantle the barbed wire around intellectual property.
Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!
Timothy C. May
tcmay@netcom.com