True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier (14 page)

If this conception seems strange, remember the example of the tailor. In a truly networked nation, it seems logical to assume that any entity which can communicate information will do so. Corporations' drive for efficiency will provide us with an ever-growing stream of products customized for our specific situations, manufactured just in time to meet needs we didn't even know we had.

Of course, information will be provided to us as well. In response to our manufactured needs, we will be fed a steady diet of 500+ channels, each with its content carefully labeled to avoid potentially offending anyone, just as CDs and video games are labeled and rated. These ratings will be the result of panoptic classifications and the people who buy them can expect to have their preferences recorded and analyzed so that the next offerings to reach their homes, cars, and offices will be closer to their expected tastes and values.

In this version of the future, business efficiency is paramount. All other needs are subsumed to the desire to have the most successful competitive capitalist structure. Neither businesses nor governments need to enact new policies for this scenario to come to pass; it does not depend on any particular new technological advances. All that is required is that we do nothing, that we continue to make decisions as they are made today, that we extend current technological advancements to more sectors of society.

The consequences of this scenario would be unnoticeable. Remember that the panoptic sort does not advance with speed; rather it moves in cautious increments, taking advantage of the willingness of people to go along with things that appear to be in everyone's best capitalistic interest. All that would happen is that our grandchildren would listen to our stories of the “old days” and shake their heads amusedly.

Cryptoprivacy

With the lessening dominance of mass media and consequent reduction in its tendency to homogenize opinion and enforce compliance with current power structures, we can speculate on the possible reemergence of a critical thought consciousness in American political discourse. Such a consciousness, presumably similar to that raised after the abuses of Watergate were made known, might lead to modification or lessening of the panoptic sort. Gandy, in reporting his studies of corporate attitudes and policies, notes that corporations are most acutely aware of public opinion and possible governmental regulation. If these factors appear to be favoring a move toward greater regulation, corporations respond by preemptively changing their policies. Presumably, they believe that voluntary changes will both ameliorate negative opinions and will be less severe than external regulation or public outcry. We might hope that Net-based political consciousness would motivate such changes.

Sadly, it seems increasingly unlikely that this will happen. Though the Net provides a potential medium for discourse and consciousness-raising dialogue, it has proved incapable of making an organized response beyond single issues such as the alerts found at the Electronic Frontier Foundation Web site. Though the Net is world wide, the most effective use of the medium has been community networks used to address town- or local-level issues and dialogue.

While it is always dangerous to hope that technology will provide answers or solutions to social problems, it does seem that we are on the verge of seeing a technology emerge which could revolutionize the power relationship between companies and individuals. This technology, ubiquitous easy public-key encryption, would permit individuals to maintain more control over their personal information. This technology and its implications are being investigated, publicized, and hotly debated by a group of hackers, mathematicians, libertarians, and social reformers loosely referred to as cypherpunks.

Cryptography itself is at least as old as Julius Caesar. Loosely speaking, encryption is the process of taking a text
X
and applying a function
f
to it to produce a cyphertext
Y.
The reverse process is to take
Y
and apply another function
g
to decrypt it and get
X
back. A major problem in the past has been that
f
depends on a key
k
such that if I know
f
and I find out
k
then I can do the decryption. Most such functions are what is known as invertible. An obvious solution is to use non-invertible functions, however, these are still susceptible to key loss.

This problem was solved by three mathematicians: Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman. They patented a technique for splitting
k
into two parts, one public and one private. The functions associated with these keys are constructed such that if I have someone's public key and
Y,
I still cannot retrieve the original message. Only the owner of the private key can decrypt the message. The best-known implementation of the RSA algorithms is Phil Zimmermann's program called PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). For the rest of this scenario I will use PGP as a synonym for public-key encryption.

The implications of this technology are potentially enormous; for the purposes of this future scenario, we will assume they are developed. The first implication is that communication can be secure from outside intrusions. As noted above, one of the most insidious effects of panoptic surveillance is that people begin to self-censor. However, if we weaken the ability of outsiders to monitor our speech, then we can speak more freely. Of course, speech in a public forum is still public and potentially monitored.

However, one of the unusual conditions of public speech on the Net is that it is speech identified with a person by virtue of an electronic address. That address can also be concealed; indeed, the cypherpunks have already set up a network of anonymous remailers that permit people to send email and post messages anonymously. We can imagine that this network will be extended in the future to permit anonymous transmission of all kinds of information. Conversely, in cases where it is important that speakers be reliably identified, these networks can refuse to transmit messages which are not validated by the proper keys. In cases such as pronouncements from public officials, this can be critically important.

The second implication of public-key cryptography is that people can generate unique signatures. In particular, given a document and a private key an author can produce a signature (a block of numbers) that is unforgeable and undeniable. That is, no other key will produce that signature and in addition any change to the message will produce a different signature. Thus, tampering and forgery are easily detected. Verification is simple and can be done by anyone with access to the author's public key, which can be freely distributed.

This capability is the converse of the first; what we say can be identified with us to a degree of certainty at least equal to that provided by physical signatures. Remember that one of the fundamental operations of the panoptic sort is identification—people are identified with file records and people are trained to carry and supply identificative tokens that reveal intimate physical information such as height, weight, and birth date. PGP allows people to be identified by their public and private keys. No necessary connection exists between a person and a key pair—people can have as many key pairs as they need, companies can generate new key pairs for each customer if they so choose.

Ultimately, an identity is a key pair. Alan-Wexelblat-who-works-for-MIT is not precisely the same person as Alan-Wexelblat-who-buys-Macintosh-computers. The importance of making this distinction can be seen in the “disclaimers” regularly made in e-mail and Usenet postings by people who wish it to be known that they are speaking solely for themselves and not for an organization that might be attached to their name.

Keys themselves can be signed. A person may have any number of other signatories to his key. These people, in effect, testify that this key belongs to this person. They, in turn, can have their keys signed. The result is what is referred to as a “web of trust” in which I may not directly know the holder of a given key, but I may know someone who knows him or someone who knows someone who knows him.

Such chains, which might be thought to be potentially quite long, are limited by the principle that all people in the world are connected by a chain of no more than six people. In addition, we can imagine that well-known institutions such as MIT would establish key-signatory authorities. Since these institutions must verify personal identity before admitting people, they can in turn testify to the identity of these people to any who want to know by signing their key. This replicates today's identificative structures wherein agents accept particular tokens because they trust that the agencies which issue those tokens have done the work necessary to establish that the bearer is indeed the person specified.

However, by having a trustworthy token with no connection to myself, I break one of the fundamental connections of the panoptic sort: the association between a person and his identification. This, in itself, is not necessarily a significant disruption to the panoptic sort, but it does move in the right direction.

The final implication of public-key encryption is the one which might have the most impact: digital cash. That is, in a future where this technology is widely used, it will be possible to buy and sell goods and services over the network with “coins” that are as valid as physical money is today, as unforgeable as the digital signatures described above, and as anonymous as encrypted messages.

The significance of this advance for disruption of the panoptic sort, and for government in general, is enormous. Digital cash is like physical cash in that it is potentially untraceable. With digital cash I can pay for goods and services with the surety of the bank or other organization that issued the digital coins, and yet not have to reveal anything at all about myself. This strikes directly at the heart of the panoptic sort.

The recourse to cash is not new. In today's society, those who are most excluded from the benefits of society are most likely to resort to using cash. In many cases, it is their only recourse—denied credit, unable to prove themselves sufficiently to make checks acceptable, they must pay with cash often after paying exorbitant fees for converting their payroll or government checks to cash. In doing so, they do not create transaction records and do not “build up credit.” In a negative sense, it can be seen as a process that keeps poorer people (or people who have bad credit or who have declared bankruptcy or whatever) from taking advantage of many of the services available to others. In a positive sense, it can be seen as a way to exempt oneself from the panoptic sort. Digital cash would make it possible for people of all means to exempt themselves to a significant degree.

This scenario supposes a series of radical changes in governmental policy. At present, U.S. cryptographic policy is strongly opposed to the widespread use of public-key encryption. Governmental agencies (particularly the FBI) would have to accept the idea that citizens would have conversations and hold information to which the government would potentially have no access. Currently, the government's approach centers on escrowed keys, export restrictions on cryptographic information (which is treated as munitions), and wiretap capabilities built into the telecommunications system (and presumably into the NII).

Businesses would also have to change their model of contact with customers. Currently, businesses feel compelled to “push” their information out to potential customers. To do that efficiently they require the ever more detailed information of the panoptic sort. However, if that information is not available, businesses would have to adopt more of a “storefront” approach where they advertise only their general existence and types of goods and wait for potential customers to come to them. This model is, to some degree, what is practiced today on the World Wide Web.

Legal changes would also have to occur to recognize a digital signature as valid. It is likely, however, that practice would lead legislation in this case—the law has often recognized technological changes as they prove themselves. For example, the recent changes that allow DNA “fingerprinting” to be admitted as evidence; there are as yet no federal laws on DNA use in court, but it is becoming accepted practice. Therefore, this scenario assumes that a series of legal cases have built up the necessary precedents for digital signatures to have the force of law.

The most important aspect of cryptoprivacy is also the one that would require the most changes. For digital money to become an everyday reality would require significant legislative changes; the ability to make money is one of the most closely held powers of any sovereign state. David Chaum, the inventor of digital cash, has set up the first company to issue and redeem DigiBucks, as they are called.

While it is highly unlikely that governments will give up their power to mint money, our economy has moved away from minted money as the primary means of exchange. Credit cards proliferate, as do electronic funds transfers. The IRS collects most of its taxes from corporations in electronic form; vast sums are transferred between banks and the Federal Reserve digitally. The fact that consumers still use physical monetary tokens is merely an indication that the electronic funds part of the NII still has not been wired up to the “last mile”—i.e., each person's house. This is changing, however, as personal financial programs such as Intuit's Quicken encourage electronic payments and personal tax preparation programs encourage electronic filing.

Chaum's company, DigiCash, has been set up in the Netherlands. However, most of its suppliers and users are in the United States. This points up one of the most troubling consequences of this scenario for the government. As noted above, corporations have historically been quite willing to change locations (“move offshore”) in order to provide more favorable environments for themselves. If digital cash becomes widely accepted and the country's consumer transactions go electronic, then government may have tremendous trouble accepting an anonymous system such as DigiCash. Currently, online means that information is more accessible to the panoptic sort. Credit records, electronic payments and so on all carry critical identificative information. Digital cash does not. It is, in effect, a virtually invisible economy and one that could spell the end of government's ability to monitor and collect taxes.