The Discovery of Terra Nova by the Cypherpunks

Cypherpunks

Ten years ago the cypherpunks were almost entirely forgotten. But now – and quite shockingly to those of us who were involved – cypherpunks are cool again. More than that, the discoveries of the cypherpunks are starting to change the world in a serious way.

That being so, I’d like to briefly recap what the cypherpunks discovered, because what these people found was a new world… a “terra nova.”

Land Ho

Our new territory was created by a combination of the internet and encryption. The internet gave us unlimited community, and encryption became our “city walls,” allowing us to separate ourselves from the rest of the world.

The first cypherpunks, being clever lads, began using the internet and encryption because they were interesting and fun. Shortly, however, they realized that they were actually building a terra nova and were instantly confronted with a huge question: How should we arrange our new world? That cranked everything into high gear.

I didn’t know this passage from Tom Paine’s Common Sense (1776) at the time, but it captures the astonishing thought that sprang from the discovery of terra nova:

We have it in our power to begin the world over again.

The First Crypto War

Not all was sweetness and light, however. Encryption was considered a munition, and exporting it was highly illegal. But it was easy to see that public key encryption (actually key exchange, published by Diffie and Hellman in 1976) was the perfect technology for the internet… and the internet was not limited to the USA.

So, a group of the clever lads hatched a plan in 1991: They’d write a nice little encryption program and send it around the world. An anti-nuke advocate named Philip Zimmerman drove the project but everyone involved wanted to avoid the jail sentence that would come from exporting their new program. They did have one trick available to them, however: the First Amendment.

So, they took the program, called Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP, and printed it as a book. And since books are protected speech, they pushed copies of the book into envelopes and mailed them to friends in Europe. Once on the far side of the Atlantic, the books were keyed back into computers and turned back into a program… and then distributed everywhere.

Zimmerman very nearly went to jail (based upon an upload to a BBS system), but the world received strong encryption.

Encryption Plus Commerce = “Oh My…”

Once you begin exchanging encrypted messages with friends, one of the next ideas to cross your mind is, Gee, some kind of electronic currency would be really nice to go with this. (David Chaum, for example, began working on digital cash after he invented cryptographic mixes back in 1981.) And once you start imagining encrypted commerce, you quickly realize just how radical this technology can be.

One by one this thought dawned upon us all. I wasn’t among the very first to grasp it, but by the mid-1990s I was struck by it as well. In a continuing education course I conducted for Iowa State University, I wrote this:

Another huge thing in years ahead will be electronic cash for Internet commerce. Electronic cash can be transferred on-line instantly, inexpensively (almost free), and, if encrypted, privately. Think about this for a minute – it will change the world.

“The Universe Favors Encryption”

The awesome power of encryption is not something that is instantly grasped.

The quote above is from Julian Assange (also a cypherpunk), and it’s quite true. Encryption, after all, is merely applied math, and math is built into the structure of the universe.

Now, to illustrate just how strongly the universe favors encryption, please consider this:

It is roughly 2100 (2 to the 100th power) times harder to decrypt a message than it is to encrypt it (unless you have the key).

Engineers debate this number of course, but it’s clearly in that range.  Here it is precisely:

1,267,650,600,228,229,401,496,703,205,376

So, when people like Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of Bitcoin, talk about an arms race between cypherpunks and old-world power, don’t simply assume that the old way will win((You should also know that post-quantum encryption already exists and is being incorporated into leading edge systems.)).

Many Other Pieces

But while the cypherpunks dropped off the radar for a couple of decades, they still produced things like BitTorrent, The Onion Router network (aka Tor, or the darknet), I2P (an even better darknet), a variety of digital cash systems, privacy systems (including the first commercial VPNs), and even commercial tools like digital escrows and dispute resolution.

The big, new cypherpunk creations, however, everyone knows: WikiLeaks and Bitcoin. I’ve explained WikiLeaks before and we have a report on Bitcoin, so I’ll leave those aside for today. But suffice it to say that a cypherpunk world has been building for some time and may form much further in the years ahead.

Is That a Good Thing?

A Planet Cypherpunk would be a radically different place from our current Planet Status Quo, and that scares some people very badly.

That fear isn’t rational of course. The ancient world is very happily long gone. We live better and behave better. The rational choice, then, is to keep that progress going, and that necessarily includes change, including radical new adaptations.

Status quo systems, however, major on fear. That’s the secret ingredient that keeps their game together. And so “right-thinking” moderns have been trained to fear anything new. That’s not rational, but it makes people feel safe.

But rather than conducting a further discourse on why Planet Cypherpunk would be better than Planet Status Quo, I’ll simply leave you with the conclusion of one of the very first cypherpunk documents: Timothy C. May’s Crypto Anarchist Manifesto, published in November 1992:

Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

  • I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
  • Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
  • There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
  • Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

TheBreakingDawn

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

ROSC 19: Back to the Shadows

ROSC19

I got a strange phone call the other day. The person on the other end played like it was a wrong number, asking for Angie something, but they were listening to my voice way too closely. What they were doing, I was pretty certain, was to see if it was really me using the phone billed to me.

The next day, I stopped by Jay’s Bar*, partly because I was nearby and partly to see if anyone was hanging around looking for me. I sat at the far corner of the bar, where I had a good angle on nearly the whole of the establishment. I ordered a tonic and lime (I don’t drink a lot of booze) and read through some of my notes.

I could see the look in Michele’s eye. He greeted me and then moved past, wiping down the bar. But as he did, looking away from me, he said, “There was a man asking about you a day ago… forty-ish, white… a pro.”

“Grazie,” I murmured while taking a drink.

That settled it; “they,” whoever they were this time, were looking for me. And so I started making notes. Some kind of government operative (and there are literally hundreds of spy agencies to choose from these days) wanted information on me and my new friends. Since we all use encryption and anonymization, getting information the usual way hadn’t done them much good. Now they were back to old-school methods: sending someone to watch and perhaps to confront.

After scribbling down a number of ideas, examining them, and choosing between them, I came to three big conclusions:

  1. We’d move our meetings between small taco joints on the north side.

  2. I’d make myself available to the watchers.

  3. I’d immediately have a talk with an old friend who is deeply connected.

I finished my second tonic and lime while trying not to look too disgusted. I motioned for Michele, handed him my money, and said, loud enough but not too loud, “See you Thursday after work.”

If “they” were listening somehow, they’d be waiting for me.

The next day I went to where my connected friend habitually eats lunch. I have his old phone number somewhere, but things like this are better done in person. And fortunately, I found him. We caught up on family and friends for a few minutes, and then I told him precisely what was going on and asked for his advice.

My friend thought for a moment, smiled at me, and pulled out his phone.

“Hey, Johnny,” he said into it. “You still bored?”

I was pretty sure whom he was talking to: a mutual friend who used to be a major player in state politics but who had left the big game and wasn’t doing much. And the continuing conversation between the two (or at least the half of it I heard) confirmed it.

“So,” my friend said as he turned to me, “you’ll meet Johnny at that bar Thursday at six, then buy him dinner next door?”

“Deal,” I said.

I thanked my friend for setting up the dinner and tried to pick up his check. He stopped me, but I protested.

“You did me a favor,” I said. “You can let me pay for your lunch.”

He shook his head and held the check.

“No,” he said. “Friends do favors for friends.”

I thanked him again and left, making a reservation at the Italian place on my way home.

Thursday I’ll meet the retired politician at Jay’s. My guess is that we’ll talk about anything but crypto for 90% of the evening: old friends, interesting stories, our families, and so on. Johnny’s a very entertaining guy.

But at least the watchers will see that I have a friend with some juice, and maybe they’ll back off a little. If nothing else, I think it will secure my position on the “non-violent dissident” list. That’s a position I can live with.

Our group’s weekly meetings, however, will have to move from place to place. That way they’ll need extended surveillance on at least some of us if they want to bug our meetings… and I can’t imagine that we’re important enough for that. The worst these kids would do is to stiff the IRS.

Our only “weapon” is cryptography… which boils down to math. This is a point that Satoshi Nakamoto made when he announced Bitcoin:

[I wrote Bitcoin to] win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom for several years.

The “arms race” of Satoshi and the cypherpunks was this:

  • They have cops, guns, and bullets… and court orders backed by them.

  • We have crypto.

And I still think that’s a good way to look at things.

More next time.

 

* Please note that the stories set in and around Jay’s Bar are fictional. They’re often based upon real people and events, but they are fiction.

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

  • I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
  • Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
  • There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
  • Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

TheBreakingDawn

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

ROSC 18: Not Parasites

rosc18

There’s something about being young, especially if you can feel young and righteous at the same time. The combination is potent and intoxicating. It’s a shame more people haven’t experienced it.

And somehow I’ve stumbled into three or four groups of such people. I’m under no illusion that they look to me as some kind of leader (I certainly hope they don’t), but they are interested in new ideas, and they don’t much care if the person bringing them is old or young.

Righteous-feeling youth does of course have a habit of damning all consequences and moving toward excess, but that’s less a natural problem and more a manufactured one . The young person being excessive soon learns from direct consequences that he or she is going too far… except if the enforcers of a jealous status quo get their hands on them first.

That’s the kind of conflict I’ve been trying to keep my young friends away from, but I refuse to fight their enthusiasm. I will not allow myself to become the agent of a corrupt status quo, protecting a dour and barbaric past from an enthusiastic and righteous future.

And so it was that I allowed my own youthful enthusiasm to rouse itself to help my young friends in their newest and perhaps boldest venture: a set of public training seminars.

Needless to say, these are not mundane courses like “How to Use Microsoft Word.”

Not a Parasite

That’s the title of their seminar program: Not a Parasite. It’s a two-day program. The first two hours are free, and everyone is invited. “Open the doors and compel them to come,” is the way it’s written in their outline. In those two hours (and I freely admit that I gave them notes to work from), they will advise attendees that they were made for more and better things than to exist as parasites feeding from the state’s trough and being kept docile with cheap booze, stupid TV, and endless Facebook.

They’ll tell stories about their grandparents and great-grandparents, who worked hard and built things and who remained proud of producing through their last moments. And they’ll contrast that with the life of an “outside the labor force” American of our time… of whom there are now 95 million.

They’ll explain that the system that forced this upon them is unworthy of their approval, their devotion, and even of their fear… that it’s a deep and persistent opponent of human happiness and is in fact destroying those 95 million people.

They’ll explain that we are built to learn and to grow and to expand, that we should be experimenting without asking permission, and that any system opposing that is the enemy of mankind.

After those two hours, they take a break and reconvene with only the paid attendees for three course tracks:

  1. Track number one is on thriving in the gig economy. They’ll be teaching about everything they’ve learned in the past few years, even the lessons they’ve learned about taxes and regulators. They won’t mention the sanitarium itself, but they will talk about having a central operations group.

  2. Track number two is on cryptocurrencies, including encryption. Everyone who attends will not only be taught how these things work, but they will actually send and receive cryptocurrency from their own phones or laptops. They’ll encrypt and decrypt with their own keys on their own devices. They’ll even help build a functioning mining rig.

  3. Track number three is on drones. Several types will be explained, built, taken apart, and rebuilt. Computerized onboard control systems will be installed and tested. The attendees will go home with a rich resource list and with both the knowledge and experience to build their own.

Moreover, our people are taking these seminars on the road (the first one is happening as I write this) to every mid-sized town they can. At least a dozen of them are involved, and several of the kids who made out well in Bitcoin are financing them. As soon as one of the team needs a break there will be others ready to step in.

More than that, Adam and his biohacker friends are ready to add a fourth track and possibly to expand the seminars into a third day.

These young people are quite aware that the powers that be will not like them teaching such things, but there’s really nothing else for them to do. The alternative is to embrace parasitism: to live and die as bureaucrat-controlled zombies.

And so they’ve chosen life, even if it comes at a price.

More next time.

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

  • I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
  • Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
  • There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
  • Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

TheBreakingDawn

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

ROSC 16: Rebels with Full Bellies

ROSC16Thank God for experience. Last week we had another of our meetings at Jay’s bar, and it almost turned into a disaster. Only long experience saved it.

Everything was proceeding nicely until I saw my old friend Martin walking up to the bar with a man who creeped me out. This guy was perfectly attired and wore the same type of overcoat I used to see in and around power centers in Rome. (I lived in Rome for a short time.) This guy smelled of “heartless elite.” Continue reading “ROSC 16: Rebels with Full Bellies”

40 Years on the Road: A Report

In 1977 I began taking road trips (driving a car or truck) up and down Interstate 80. I had taken a few road trips prior, but 1977 was the first time I drove cross-country as an adult and for work… the first time I was looking on the experience with moderately confident and mature eyes. I’ve taken road trips many times since, though not in the past two years.

40Yearsroad(This piece was originally published in 2017.) 

In 1977 I began taking road trips (driving a car or truck) up and down Interstate 80. I had taken a few road trips prior, but 1977 was the first time I drove cross-country as an adult and for work… the first time I was looking on the experience with moderately confident and mature eyes. Continue reading “40 Years on the Road: A Report”