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\title{From Crossbows To Cryptography: Techno-Thwarting The State}
\author{Chuck Hammill\\
\it{weaponsrus@earthlink.net}}
\date{Given at the Future of Freedom Conference, November 1987}

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\chead{From Crossbows To Cryptography}
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Public Domain: Duplicate and Distribute Freely
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You know, technology -- and particularly computer technology -- has often
gotten a bad rap in Libertarian circles. We tend to think of Orwell's 1984,
or Terry Gilliam's Brazil, or the proximity detectors keeping East Berlin's
slave/citizens on their own side of the border, or the so-phisticated
bugging devices Nixon used to harass those on his "enemies list." Or, we
recognize that for the price of a ticket on the Concorde we can fly at twice
the speed of sound, but only if we first walk thru a magnetometer run by a
government policeman, and permit him to paw thru our belongings if it beeps.

But I think that mind-set is a mistake. Before there were cattle prods,
governments tortured their prisoners with clubs and rubber hoses. Before
there were lasers for eavesdropping, governments used binoculars and
lip-readers. Though government certainly uses technology to oppress, the
evil lies not in the tools but in the wielder of the tools.

In fact, technology represents one of the most promising avenues available
for re-capturing our freedoms from those who have stolen them. By its very
nature, it favors the bright (who can put it to use) over the dull (who
cannot). It favors the adaptable (who are quick to see the merit of the new)
over the sluggish (who cling to time-tested ways). And what two better words
are there to describe government bureaucracy than "dull" and "sluggish"?

One of the clearest, classic triumphs of technology over tyranny I see is
the invention of the man-portable crossbow. With it, an untrained peasant
could now reliably and lethally engage a target out to fifty meters -- even
if that target were a mounted, chain-mailed knight. Unlike the longbow,
which, admittedly was more powerful, and could get off more shots per unit
time, the crossbow required no formal training to utilize. Whereas the
longbow required elaborate visual, tactile and kinesthetic coordination to
achieve any degree of accuracy, the wielder of a crossbow could simply put
the weapon to his shoulder, sight along the arrow itself, and be reasonably
assured of hitting his target.

Moreover, since just about the only mounted knights likely to visit your
average peasant would be government soldiers and tax collectors, the utility
of the device was plain: With it, the common rabble could defend themselves
not only against one another, but against their governmental masters. It was
the medieval equivalent of the armor-piercing bullet, and, consequently,
kings and priests (the medieval equivalent of a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
and Crossbows) threatened death and excommunication, respectively, for its
unlawful possession.

Looking at later developments, we see how technology like the firearm --
particularly the repeating rifle and the handgun, later followed by the
Gatling gun and more advanced machine guns -- radically altered the balance
of interpersonal and inter-group power. Not without reason was the Colt .45
called "the equalizer." A frail dance-hall hostess with one in her
possession was now fully able to protect herself against the brawniest
roughneck in any saloon. Advertisements for the period also reflect the
merchandising of the repeating cartridge rifle by declaring that "a man on
horseback, armed with one of these rifles, simply cannot be captured." And,
as long as his captors were relying upon flintlocks or single-shot rifles,
the quote is doubtless a true one.

Updating now to the present, the public-key cipher (with a personal computer
to run it) represents an equivalent quantum leap -- in a defensive
weapon. Not only can such a technique be used to protect sensitive data in
one's own possession, but it can also permit two strangers to exchange
information over an insecure communications channel -- a wiretapped phone
line, for example, or skywriting, for that matter) -- without ever having
previously met to exchange cipher keys. With a thousand-dollar computer, you
can create a cipher that a multi-megabuck CRAY X-MP can't crack in a
year. Within a few years, it should be economically feasible to similarly
encrypt voice communications; soon after that, full-color digitized video
images. Technology will not only have made wiretapping obsolete, it will
have totally demolished government's control over information transfer.

I'd like to take just a moment to sketch the mathematics which makes this
principle possible. This algorithm is called the RSA algorithm, after
Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman who jointly created it. Its security derives
from the fact that, if a very large number is the product of two very large
primes, then it is extremely difficult to obtain the two prime factors from
analysis of their product. "Extremely" in the sense that if primes $p$ and 
$q$ have 100 digits apiece, then their 200-digit product cannot in general be
factored in less than 100 years by the most powerful computer now in
existence.

The "public" part of the key consists of (1) the product $pq$ of the two large
primes $p$ and $q$, and (2) one factor, call it $x$, of the product $xy$ 
where $xy = (p-1)(q-1) + 1$. The "private" part of the key consists of the
other factor $y$.

Each block of the text to be encrypted is first turned into an integer --
either by using ASCII, or even a simple A=01, B=02, C=03, ..., Z=26
representation. This integer is then raised to the power $x$ $mod(pq)$ and
the resulting integer is then sent as the encrypted message. The receiver
decrypts by taking this integer to the (secret) power $y$ $mod(pq)$. It can
be shown that this process will always yield the original number started
with.

What makes this a groundbreaking development, and why it is called "public-
key" cryptography, is that I can openly publish the product $pq$ and the 
number $x$, while keeping secret the number $y$ -- so that anyone can send
me an encrypted message, namely $a^x$ $mod(pq)$, but only I can recover the
original message $a$, by taking what they send, raising it to the power $y$
and taking the result $mod(pq)$. The risky step (meeting to exchange cipher
keys) has been eliminated. So people who may not even trust each other enough
to want to meet, may still reliably exchange encrypted messages -- each party
having selected and disseminated his own $pq$ and his $x$, while maintaining
the secrecy of his own $y$.

Another benefit of this scheme is the notion of a "digital signature", to
enable one to authenticate the source of a given message. Normally, if I
want to send you a message, I raise my plaintext $a$ to your $x$ and take
the result $mod(your$ $pq)$ and send that.

However, if in my message, I take the plaintext $a$ and raise it to my
(secret) power $y$, take the result $mod(my$ $pq)$, then raise that result
to your $x$ $mod(your$ $pq)$ and send this, then even after you have normally
"decrypted" the message, it will still look like garbage. However, if you
then raise it to my public power $x$, and take the result $mod(my$ $pubic$
$pq)$, so you will not only recover the original plaintext message, but you 
will know that no one but I could have sent it to you (since no one else knows
my secret $y$).

And these are the very concerns by the way that are today tormenting the
Soviet Union about the whole question of personal computers. On the one
hand, they recognize that American schoolchildren are right now growing up
with computers as commonplace as sliderules used to be -- more so, in fact,
because there are things computers can do which will interest (and instruct)
3- and 4-year-olds. And it is precisely these students who one generation
hence will be going head-to-head against their Soviet counterparts. For the
Soviets to hold back might be a suicidal as continuing to teach
swordsmanship while your adversaries are learning ballistics. On the other
hand, whatever else a personal computer may be, it is also an exquisitely
efficient copying machine -- a floppy disk will hold upwards of 50,000 words
of text, and can be copied in a couple of minutes. If this weren't
threatening enough, the computer that performs the copy can also encrypt the
data in a fashion that is all but unbreakable. Remember that in Soviet
society publicly accessible Xerox machines are unknown. The relatively few
copying machines in existence are controlled more intensively than machine
guns are in the United States.

Now the "conservative" position is that we should not sell these computers
to the Soviets, because they could use them in weapons systems. The
"liberal" position is that we should sell them, in the interests of mutual
trade and cooperation -- and anyway, if we don't make the sale, there will
certainly be some other nation willing to.

For my part, I'm ready to suggest that the Libertarian position should be to
give them to the Soviets for free, and if necessary, make them take them...
and if that doesn't work load up an SR-71 Blackbird and air drop them
over Moscow in the middle of the night. Paid for by private subscription, of
course, not taxation...

I confess that this is not a position that has
gained much support among members of the conventional left-right political
spectrum, but, after all, in the words of one of Illuminatus's characters,
we are political non-Euclideans: The shortest distance to a particular goal
may not look anything like what most people would consider a "straight
line." Taking a long enough world-view, it is arguable that breaking the
Soviet government monopoly on information transfer could better lead to the
enfeeblement and, indeed, to the ultimate dissolution of the Soviet empire
than would the production of another dozen missiles aimed at Moscow.

But there's the rub: A "long enough" world view does suggest that the evil,
the oppressive, the coercive and the simply stupid will "get what they
deserve," but what's not immediately clear is how the rest of us can escape
being killed, enslaved, or pauperized in the process.

When the liberals and other collectivists began to attack freedom, they
possessed a reasonably stable, healthy, functioning economy, and almost
unlimited time to proceed to hamstring and dismantle it. A policy of
political gradualism was at least conceivable. But now, we have patchwork
crazy-quilt economy held together by baling wire and spit. The state not
only taxes us to "feed the poor" while also inducing farmers to slaughter
milk cows and drive up food prices -- it then simultaneously turns around
and subsidizes research into agricultural chemicals designed to increase
yields of milk from the cows left alive. Or witness the fact that a decline
in the price of oil is considered as potentially frightening as a comparable
increase a few years ago. When the price went up, we were told, the economy
risked collapse for for want of energy. The price increase was called the
"moral equivalent of war" and the Feds swung into action. For the first time
in American history, the speed at which you drive your car to work in the
morning became an issue of Federal concern. Now, when the price of oil
drops, again we risk problems, this time because American oil companies and
Third World basket-case nations who sell oil may not be able to ever pay
their debts to our grossly over-extended banks. The suggested panacea is
that government should now re-raise the oil prices that OPEC has lowered,
via a new oil tax. Since the government is seeking to raise oil prices to
about the same extent as OPEC did, what can we call this except the "moral
equivalent of civil war -- the government against its own people?"

And, classically, in international trade, can you imagine any entity in the
world except a government going to court claiming that a vendor was selling
it goods too cheaply and demanding not only that that naughty vendor be
compelled by the court to raise its prices, but also that it be punished for
the act of lowering them in the first place? So while the statists could
afford to take a couple of hundred years to trash our economy and our
liberties -- we certainly cannot count on having an equivalent period of
stability in which to reclaim them. I contend that there exists almost a
"black hole" effect in the evolution of nation-states just as in the
evolution of stars. Once freedom contracts beyond a certain minimum extent,
the state warps the fabric of the political continuum about itself to the
degree that subsequent re-emergence of freedom becomes all but impossible. A
good illustration of this can be seen in the area of so-called "welfare"
payments. When those who sup at the public trough outnumber (and thus
outvote) those whose taxes must replenish the trough, then what possible
choice has a democracy but to perpetuate and expand the taking from the few
for the unearned benefit of the many? Go down to the nearest "welfare"
office, find just two people on the dole... and recognize that between
them they form a voting bloc that can forever outvote you on the question of
who owns your life -- and the fruits of your life's labor.

So essentially those who love liberty need an "edge" of some sort if we're
ultimately going to prevail. We obviously can't use the altruists'
"other-directedness" of "work, slave, suffer, sacrifice, so that next
generation of a billion random strangers can live in a better world."
Recognize that, however immoral such an appeal might be, it is nonetheless
an extremely powerful one in today's culture. If you can convince people to
work energetically for a "cause," caring only enough for their personal
welfare so as to remain alive enough and healthy enough to continue working
-- then you have a truly massive reservoir of energy to draw from. Equally
clearly, this is just the sort of appeal which tautologically cannot be
utilized for egoistic or libertarian goals. If I were to stand up before you
tonight and say something like, "Listen, follow me as I enunciate my noble
"cause," contribute your money to support the "cause," give up your free
time to work for the "cause," strive selflessly to bring it about, and then
(after you and your children are dead) maybe your children's children will
actually live under egoism" -- you'd all think I'd gone mad. And of course
you'd be right. Because the point I'm trying to make is that libertarianism
and/or egoism will be spread if, when, and as, individual libertarians
and/or egoists find it profitable and/or enjoyable to do so. And probably
only then.

While I certainly do not disparage the concept of political action, I don't
believe that it is the only, nor even necessarily the most cost-effective
path toward increasing freedom in our time. Consider that, for a fraction of
the investment in time, money and effort I might expend in trying to
convince the state to abolish wiretapping and all forms of censorship -- I
can teach every libertarian who's interested how to use cryptography to
abolish them unilaterally.

There is a maxim -- a proverb -- generally attributed to the Eskimoes, which
very likely most Libertarians have already heard. And while you likely would
not quarrel with the saying, you might well feel that you've heard it often
enough already, and that it has nothing further to teach us, and moreover,
that maybe you're even tired of hearing it. I shall therefore repeat it now:

If you give a man a fish, the saying runs, you feed him for a day. But if
you teach a man how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.

Your exposure to the quote was probably in some sort of a "workfare"
vs. "welfare" context; namely, that if you genuinely wish to help someone in
need, you should teach him how to earn his sustenance, not simply how to beg
for it. And of course this is true, if only because the next time he is
hungry, there might not be anybody around willing or even able to give him a
fish, whereas with the information on how to fish, he is completely self
sufficient.

But I submit that this exhausts only the first order content of the quote,
and if there were nothing further to glean from it, I would have wasted your
time by citing it again. After all, it seems to have almost a
crypto-altruist slant, as though to imply that we should structure our
activities so as to maximize the benefits to such hungry beggars as we may
encounter.

But consider: 

Suppose this Eskimo doesn't know how to fish, but he does know
how to hunt walruses. You, on the other hand, have often gone hungry while
traveling thru walrus country because you had no idea how to catch the damn
things, and they ate most of the fish you could catch. And now suppose the 
two of you decide to exchange information, bartering fishing knowledge for
hunting knowledge. Well, the first thing to observe is that a transaction of
this type categorically and unambiguously refutes the Marxist premise that
every trade must have a "winner" and a "loser;" the idea that if one person
gains, it must necessarily be at the "expense" of another person who
loses. Clearly, under this scenario, such is not the case. Each party has
gained something he did not have before, and neither has been diminished in
any way. When it comes to exchange of information (rather than material
objects) life is no longer a zero-sum game. This is an extremely powerful
notion. The "law of diminishing returns," the "first and second laws of
thermodynamics" -- all those "laws" which constrain our possibilities in
other contexts -- no longer bind us! Now that's anarchy!

Or consider another possibility: 

Suppose this hungry Eskimo never learned
to fish because the ruler of his nation-state had decreed fishing
illegal. Because fish contain dangerous tiny bones, and sometimes sharp
spines, he tells us, the state has decreed that their consumption -- and
even their possession -- are too hazardous to the people's health to be
permitted . . . even by knowledgeable, willing adults. Perhaps it is because
citizens' bodies are thought to be government property, and therefore it is
the function of the state to punish those who improperly care for government
property. Or perhaps it is because the state generously extends to competent
adults the "benefits" it provides to children and to the mentally ill:
namely, a full-time, all-pervasive supervisory conservatorship -- so that
they need not trouble themselves with making choices about behavior thought
physically risky or morally "naughty." But, in any case, you stare
stupefied, while your Eskimo informant relates how this law is taken so
seriously that a friend of his was recently imprisoned for years for the
crime of "possession of nine ounces of trout with intent to distribute."

Now you may conclude that a society so grotesquely oppressive as to enforce
a law of this type is simply an affront to the dignity of all human
beings. You may go farther and decide to commit some portion of your
discretionary, recreational time specifically to the task of thwarting this
tyrant's goal. (Your rationale may be "altruistic" in the sense of wanting
to liberate the oppressed, or "egoistic" in the sense of proving you can
outsmart the oppressor -- or very likely some combination of these or
perhaps even other motives.)

But, since you have zero desire to become a martyr to your "cause," you're
not about to mount a military campaign, or even try to run a boatload of
fish through the blockade. However, it is here that technology -- and in
particular information technology -- can multiply your efficacy literally a
hundredfold. I say "literally," because for a fraction of the effort (and
virtually none of the risk) attendant to smuggling in a hundred fish, you
can quite readily produce a hundred Xerox copies of fishing
instructions. If the targeted government, like present-day America, at
least permits open discussion of topics whose implementation is restricted,
then that should suffice. But, if the government attempts to suppress the
flow of information as well, then you will have to take a little more effort
and perhaps write your fishing manual on a floppy disk encrypted according
to your mythical Eskimo's public-key parameters. But as far as increasing
real-world access to fish you have made genuine nonzero headway -- which may
continue to snowball as others re-disseminate the information you have
provided. And you have not had to waste any of your time trying to convert
ideological adversaries, or even trying to win over the undecided. Recall
Harry Browne's dictum from "Freedom in an Unfree World" that the success of
any endeavor is in general inversely proportional to the number of people
whose persuasion is necessary to its fulfilment.

If you look at history, you cannot deny that it has been dramatically shaped
by men with names like Washington, Lincoln, Nixon, Marcos, Duvalier, Khadaffi
and their ilk. But it has also been shaped by people with names like Edison,
Curie, Marconi, Tesla and Wozniak. And this latter shaping has been at least
as pervasive, and not nearly so bloody.

And that's where I'm trying to take The LiberTech Project. Rather than
beseeching the state to please not enslave, plunder or constrain us, I
propose a libertarian network spreading the technologies by which we may
seize freedom for ourselves.

But here we must be a bit careful. While it is not (at present) illegal to
encrypt information when government wants to spy on you, there is no
guarantee of what the future may hold. There have been bills introduced, for
example, which would have made it a crime to wear body armor when government
wants to shoot you. That is, if you were to commit certain crimes while
wearing a Kevlar vest, then that fact would constitute a separate federal
crime of its own. This law to my knowledge has not passed, yet... but it does
indicate how government thinks.

Other technological applications, however, do indeed pose legal risks. We
recognize, for example, that anyone who helped a pre-Civil War slave escape
on the "underground railroad" was making a clearly illegal use of technology
-- as the sovereign government of the United States of America at that time
found the buying and selling of human beings quite as acceptable as the
buying and selling of cattle. Similarly, during Prohibition, anyone who used
his bathtub to ferment yeast and sugar into the illegal psychoactive drug,
alcohol -- the controlled substance, wine -- was using technology in a way
that could get him shot dead by federal agents for his "crime" --
unfortunately not to be restored to life when Congress reversed itself and
re-permitted use of this drug.

So, to quote a former President, un-indicted co-conspirator and pardoned 
felon: "Let me make one thing perfectly clear:" The LiberTech Project does
not advocate, participate in, or conspire in the violation of any law -- no
matter how oppressive, unconstitutional or simply stupid such law may be. 
It does engage in description (for educational and informational purposes 
only) of technological processes, and some of these processes (like flying a
plane or manufacturing a firearm) may well require appropriate licensing to
perform legally. Fortunately, no license is needed for the distribution or
receipt of information itself.

So, the next time you look at the political scene and despair, thinking,
"Well, if 51% of the nation and 51% of this State, and 51% of this city have
to turn Libertarian before I'll be free, then somebody might as well cut my
goddamn throat now, and put me out of my misery" -- recognize that such is
not the case. There exist ways to make yourself free.

If you wish to explore such techniques via the Project, you are welcome to
give me your name and address -- or a fake name and mail drop, for that
matter -- and you'll go on the mailing list for my erratically-published
newsletter. Any friends or acquaintances whom you think would be interested
are welcome as well. I'm not even asking for stamped self-addressed
envelopes, since my printer can handle mailing labels and actual postage
costs are down in the noise compared with the other efforts in getting an
issue out. If you should have an idea to share, or even a useful product to
plug, I'll be glad to have you write it up for publication. Even if you want
to be the proverbial "free rider" and just benefit from what others
contribute -- you're still welcome: Everything will be public domain; feel
free to copy it or give it away (or sell it, for that matter, 'cause if you
can get money for it while I'm taking full-page ads trying to give it away,
you're certainly entitled to your capitalist profit...) Anyway, every
application of these principles should make the world just a little freer,
and I'm certainly willing to underwrite that, at least for the forseeable
future.

I will leave you with one final thought: If you don't learn how to beat your
plowshares into swords before they outlaw swords, then you sure as HELL
ought to learn before they outlaw plowshares too.


-- Chuck Hammill

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