Wanting to keep certain information secret from others and for it to be known only to those whom you choose is as old as the hills. Using encryption is one way of trying to ensure you achieve this.
Tools and methods which can be used to encrypt information have been around for millennia. Julius Caesar used a form in his despatches to his field commanders. Mary Queen of Scots encrypted messages on vellum, wrapped them in oilskins which were then hidden in (presumably empty but still very wet) barrels of beer so they could be smuggled out of her prison. With these messages she plotted the overthrow of Queen Elizabeth the First and the restoration of Roman Catholicism as the official religion. Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s security chief, managed to intercept the messages and get them decrypted. It cost Mary and many of her co-conspirators their heads.
More recently the military and intelligence services have had access to strong encryption tools for decades, but they tended to be deployed within closed expensive systems which were and are simply not available to the general public, nor are they ever likely to be.
Pretty Good Privacy
In the context of the internet, it is widely agreed that the potential for anyone and everyone to start encrypting their online communications can be traced back to the actions of a single person, Phil Zimmerman. In the early 1990s he developed the code for “Pretty Good Privacy” (PGP), a form of strong encryption to be used principally with emails. In the mid-1990s he released the code for PGP on to the internet. The US authorities were furious. They tried to stop its further circulation. They failed.
A worry about Government encroachment
In June 1996, after an attempt to prosecute him was finally dropped, Zimmerman gave evidence to the US Senate. In it he explained his motivation for distributing PGP in the way he did. Zimmerman’s statement made clear he designed and intended PGP to be a shield against a hostile world in which, above all others, US Government agencies were the biggest problem and posed the greatest challenge.
Zimmerman did refer briefly to human rights abuses in other countries, implying PGP could help protect against them, but that was a fraction of his larger evidence. PGP was being offered principally as a defensive weapon against Uncle Sam.
There is a historic strand of US political thinking which is characterised by hostility to all forms of Government and while this is by no means unique to America, it is held to be respectable and acceptable there in ways and on a scale almost entirely alien to all the other liberal democracies of the world, at least those that have never had to live through the scourge of totalitarianism in modern times.
Zimmerman was not speaking in a vacuum. A few months before he appeared in Congress “The Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” had been published. As you will see from the link provided, the Declaration is still hosted on the web site of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. It is not clear if the EFF keeps it there as an interesting historical artefact or as a statement of its continuing perspective.
Here is the opening paragraph:
“Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather”.
And further down we see this:
“In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty…”
I’m lost for words at this level of political illiteracy.
A worry about “the Dictator”
Recently I was in a former Communist country where a cryptologist perfectly described how End to End Encryption (E2EE) works. As far as he was concerned the whole purpose of it was to defeat someone he referred to in his PowerPoint as “the Dictator”.
BBC Newsnight
“Newsnight” is a major BBC TV current affairs daily programme. Phil Zimmerman appeared live on the programme from America with me in the studio in London. I asked him if he had any qualms or doubts about releasing PGP for anyone to download and use. I specifically mentioned that the Mafia and organized crime could now avail themselves of PGP thereby making the job of the police and the courts potentially impossible in cases where it had been used to commit or cover up a felony. His answer went something like this.
“As far as I can see, since the end of the Second World War our Federal and state agencies have done as much harm to the people of America as organized crime has.”
There we have it. An inability to distinguish between the Mafia and the Government, the notion that we have to assume “the Dictator” is watching our every move, or wants to, a belief that the internet prefigures a world in which all Governments fade away or have no purchase and this would be better for everyone. These were some of the key original drivers behind the push for the mass availability of encryption.
A curse on both your houses
As the internet started becoming a major public facing utility, a marvellous coincidence of interests crystallized between a bucaneering, chaotic mixture of free market entrepreneurs, techies largely employed by them, academics interested in network development and libertarians who saw the potential of the internet to end tyrrany everywhere.
They all developed a symbiotic co-dependency made more palatable as the whole project became wrapped inside clever philanthropy which made it look like Silicon Valley was leading us inevitably to a new kind of world. It was one which would be infinitely better than the one we already had, economically, politically and socially. What’s not to like?
It all found perfect expression in s230 CDA 1996. Self-regulation, permissionless innovation, a right to innovate, acquired the status of Holy Writ. However, before too long other types of concerns started popping up. These were linked to huge abuses of privacy in rapidly expanding social media.
This complicated the old alliance, particularly for the libertarians and those among the others who had libertarian leanings. Their erstwhile and often generous allies were now looking like baddies. But what didn’t change for any of them was a belief that all-forms-of-Government-and-all-their-works are deeply suspect. So they became frenemies. Sometimes on the same side, sometimes not and it was hard keeping track.
Techie tools came to be seen as legitimate weapons in a fight against the endemic corruption and uselessness of politics. The more weapons we can have and the stronger they are the greater are our chances of being “free”. A great many privacy campaigners hold this truth to be self-evident. It needs no higher authority than their own judgement. And who is going to argue against privacy anyway? It’s a great idea. What is not so great is when privacy is elevated above all other rights. In effect this renders mute other rights. Nobody has ever voted for anything like that. It is not OK.
Worse and worse we were asked to accept that because of libertarian feelings about totalitarian states everybody everywhere has to just put up with it and be glad these tools existed. We would be betraying the poor benighted people of North Korea or wherever if we did x or y to protect children in Sweden or the UK. It is absurd and phoney. A manipulative emotional ploy.
No faith in democracy
Someone once famously said “Democracy is the worst possible form of government except for all the alternatives which have been tried from time to time.”
Those who acknowledge the wisdom of these words know it is far better to live and work with the often-frustrating imperfections and shortcomings of democracy than it is to try an “alternative”.
The alternative I have in mind here is a technocracy. A situation where a group of unelected people make decisions which, in this case, effectively circumscribe or set limits on what a national legislature can do, or what the judiciary can do in furtherance of decisions of that national legislature.
Our ancestors fought to win the vote in order to be able to exercise greater control over their own lives. They did this in order to improve their lot and that of their family. The digital technocrats appear to think we are all now being hoaxed. They know better and will protect us from the consequences of our innocence. Insert expletives at this point? Maybe not.
In other words, what we are being asked to accept is private individuals who hold a particular view of the world, or private entities in pursuit of profit are allowed to set limits on what a country’s democratic institutions may decide or its legal institutions may insist upon in furtherance of those democratically determined decisions.
Goodness knows, when you look at the recent state of politics in the USA, one can understand why groups in America, where so many techies and tech companies are still based, might be at their wits end. But to go into “techno survivalist” mode, to retreat behind an impenetrable technical wall fails to address the cause and only deals with the symptoms. It is defeatist.
Don’t get me wrong. Of course I understand the worries about state agencies stepping over lines. Governments do break the law. What I refuse to believe or accept is the idea that this is how it will always be and there is nothing we can do about it except retreat behind said technical barriers. That’s the equivalent of saying
“Bang the bell Jack. I’m on the bus.”
and
“Devil take the hindmost”.
I am not yet willing to give up my belief in the possibility of achieving worthwhile change by peaceful means, through the ballot box. Rule by unaccountable technocrats or plutocrats will never be in any way preferable.
Desiderata 