Hacker Chronicles 2/HACKER2.BIN/1100.NDAY-2-1

Text File | 1994-02-01 | 6KB | 129 lines

Life in Cyberspace - Joshua Quittner
New York Newsday - Page 59
Tuesday, 01 February 1994

CODING UP A BIT OF PRIVACY

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.

This must be how the Founding Fathers looked when they hacked out the
Constitution :

A roomful of young men, mostly--frazzled hair, eager eyes, wild beards,
arms flailing and fingers jabbing in air, reaching for big ideas.  You
can't help but feel it; urgency tempers their voices.  The earnest men
plan and argue in this corporate conference room as the last sun rays of
a winter Saturday afternoon fade in through a skylight.

Time is running out for the Cypherpunks.

There is much work to be done before the information highway arrives.
The information highway --- that 500-channel shopping mall/cineplex
championed by cable and telephone companies --- is a noxious concept to
the people in this room.  They are not technophobes or Luddites, these
Cypherpunks,  Instead, they are a collection of clever computer
programmers, engineers and wire heads from some of the nation's best-known
Silicon Valley software houses and hardware shops.

This is their central question:  In a future world where all information
is centralized on a network, where all information is tracked by the bit,
where every purchase you make and every communication can be monitored by
corporate America, how does privacy survive?  If you go to the bookstore
now and buy a book, you can pay in cash.  No one knows your name or what
you purchased.  "What happens to cash transactions on the information
highway?" they ask.

The Cypherpunks believe that they can preserve your privacy through good
cyphers, or codes.  But they must hurry, must get their codes out and
their networks up and running.

"The whole information highway thing is now part of the public eye,"
explain Eric Hughes, a founder of the Cypherpunk movement.  "If we don't
change it now, it'll be impossible later."  The Cypherpunks know what
technology is capable of.  We visit them today because they represent one
edge of the national debate on the structure of the information highway.
And as we all know, extreme positions help define the middle.

Many of the Cypherpunks have been heavy Internet users for years and hope
to preserve the communal spirit of that freewheeling world of
interconnected computer networks.  They dread the coming commercial
network of televisions and computers, saying it will displace the
Internet and destroy many of the freedoms they now enjoy.

So the Cypherpunks, with the kind of zeal they professionally bring to
marathon, 72-hour sessions hacking computer code, are plotting to keep
free networks alive.  That's "free" in the sense of unfettered,
unmonitored, uncensored.

One way they're going about it is by spreading easy-to-use, cheap
cryptography.  Cryptography is the science of keeping two-way
communication private.  Computers, it turns out, are revolutionary
cryptographic tools, able to encode and decode files quickly.  For the
first time, virtually unbreakable codes are now possible, thanks to
computers.

The Cypherpunks post cryptographic software on the Internet where anyone
can access it, and can encode their communications, including electronic
mail, pictures and video.

The the U.S. government is concerned, as governments always are, about
the spread of powerful cryptography (terrorists could use it, kidnappers
could use it, drug dealers could use it, all of them on cellular phones
that encode conversations).  It currently is pushing its own commercial
cryptographic standard, through a special chip known as the Clipper.  The
chip is reviled by Cypherpunks and other civil libertarians because it
provides a back door that law-enforcement agencies could enter, with the
proper warrants, for surveillance.

By getting good, unbreakable cryptography out there now, the Cypherpunks
hope, whatever the government finally decides will be moot.

Software has a wonderful property, the Cypherpunks are fond of saying:
Once it's created, it can never be destroyed.  It can be copied
infinitely, from computer to computer, spreading like a secret.  Come
what may, unbreakable Cypherpunk code, and Cypherpunk networks, will be
out there forever, they hope.  But just to be safe, the Cypherpunks are
toying with different network-related plans to create an economy of
"digicash" --- network money that, like the dollars in your pocket, isn't
tied to a user's credit cards or other personal identification.  Digicash
will help pay for Cypherpunk networks and will allow people to purchase
goods without revealing their identity.

"I'm starting a bank, and it's not going to be a U.S. bank," Hughes
says.  He standing at the whiteboard now.  A strawberry-blond ponytail
dangles down his back and he grasps a magic marker in his hand.  "We have
several long-term strategies, one of which is the elimination of central
banks."  He tells the assembled crowd what they already know.  Heads
nod.  Some people take notes.

Hughes is a self-employed programmer in Berkeley.  His hand flies across
the whiteboard, sketching out a schematic diagram, showing how his bank
will operate.  The bank will store depositors' money (he's thinking a
$200 minimum deposit) and disburse payments to anyone --- all over the
Internet.  It will be based abroad, maybe in Mexico.  A Cypherpunk
network bank is one way to pay for a network of truly encrypted, private
communications, you see.

"Is this going to lead the way to portable laptop ATM machines?" someone
else asks.

"First Bank of Cyberspace!" yells one person.

"First Internet bank!" yells another.

"The Nth National Bank!"

Laughter.  Billy goat beards bob.
There is much work to be done.

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Net Tips

If you have e-mail access to the Internet, you can subscribe free to the
Cypherpunks mailing list, which circulates to about 750 people daily.
Send an e-mail message to:  [e-mail] with the word "
Subscribe" and your name in body of message.  More information about
cryptography, as well as cryptographic software, can be obtained over the
Internet by ftp'ing to: ftp.soda.berkeley.edu
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