The Cyphernomicon

4. Goals and Ideology — Privacy, Freedom, New Approaches

4.1. copyright
THE CYPHERNOMICON: Cypherpunks FAQ and More, Version 0.666,
1994-09-10, Copyright Timothy C. May. All rights reserved.
See the detailed disclaimer. Use short sections under «fair
use» provisions, with appropriate credit, but don’t put your
name on my words.

4.2. SUMMARY: Goals and Ideology — Privacy, Freedom, New Approaches
4.2.1. Main Points
4.2.2. Connections to Other Sections

• Crypto Anarchy is the logical outgrowth of strong crypto.
  4.2.3. Where to Find Additional Information
• Vernor Vinge’s «True Names»
• David Friedman’s «Machinery of Freedom»
  4.2.4. Miscellaneous Comments
• Most of the list members are libertarians, or leaning in
  that direction, so the bias toward this is apparent.
• (If there’s a coherent non-libertarian ideology, that’s
  also consistent with supporting strong crypto, I’m not sure
  it’s been presented.)

4.3. Why a Statement of Ideology?
4.3.1. This is perhaps a controversial area. So why include it? The
main reason is to provide some grounding for the later
comments on many issues.
4.3.2. People should not expect a uniform ideology on this list.
Some of us are anarcho-capitalist radicals (or «crypto
anarchists»), others of us are staid Republicans, and still
others are Wobblies and other assored leftists.

4.4. «Welcome to Cypherpunks»
4.4.1. This is the message each new subscriber to the Cypherpunks
lists gets, by Eric Hughes:
4.4.2. «Cypherpunks assume privacy is a good thing and wish there
were more of it. Cypherpunks acknowledge that those who want
privacy must create it for themselves and not expect
governments, corporations, or other large, faceless
organizations to grant them privacy out of beneficence.
Cypherpunks know that people have been creating their own
privacy for centuries with whispers, envelopes, closed doors,
and couriers. Cypherpunks do not seek to prevent other
people from speaking about their experiences or their
opinions.

«The most important means to the defense of privacy is
encryption. To encrypt is to indicate the desire for privacy.
But to encrypt with weak cryptography is to indicate not too
much desire for privacy. Cypherpunks hope that all people
desiring privacy will learn how best to defend it.

«Cypherpunks are therefore devoted to cryptography.
Cypherpunks wish to learn about it, to teach it, to implement
it, and to make more of it. Cypherpunks know that
cryptographic protocols make social structures. Cypherpunks
know how to attack a system and how to defend it.
Cypherpunks know just how hard it is to make good
cryptosystems.

«Cypherpunks love to practice. They love to play with public
key cryptography. They love to play with anonymous and
pseudonymous mail forwarding and delivery. They love to play
with DC-nets. They love to play with secure communications
of all kinds.

«Cypherpunks write code. They know that someone has to write
code to defend privacy, and since it’s their privacy, they’re
going to write it. Cypherpunks publish their code so that
their fellow cypherpunks may practice and play with it.
Cypherpunks realize that security is not built in a day and
are patient with incremental progress.

«Cypherpunks don’t care if you don’t like the software they
write. Cypherpunks know that software can’t be destroyed.
Cypherpunks know that a widely dispersed system can’t be shut
down.

«Cypherpunks will make the networks safe for privacy.» [Eric
Hughes, 1993-07-21 version]

4.5. «Cypherpunks Write Code»
4.5.1. «Cypherpunks write code» is almost our mantra.
4.5.2. This has come to be a defining statement. Eric Hughes used it
to mean that Cypherpunks place more importance in actually
changing things, in actually getting working code out, than
in merely talking about how things «ought» to be.

• Eric Hughes statement needed here:
• Karl Kleinpaste, author of one of the early anonymous
  posting services (Charcoal) said this about some proposal
  made: «If you’ve got serious plans for how to implement
  such a thing, please implement it at least skeletally and
  deploy it. Proof by example, watching such a system in
  action, is far better than pontification about it.»
  [Karl_Kleinpaste@cs.cmu.edu, news.admin.policy, 1994-06-30]
  4.5.3. «The admonition, «Cypherpunks write code,» should be taken
  metaphorically. I think «to write code» means to take
  unilateral effective action as an individual. That may mean
  writing actual code, but it could also mean dumpster diving
  at Mycrotronx and anonymously releasing the recovered
  information. It could also mean creating an offshore digital
  bank. Don’t get too literal on us here. What is important
  is that Cypherpunks take personal responsibility for
  empowering themselves against threats to privacy.» [Sandy
  Sandfort, 1994-07-08]
  4.5.4. A Cypherpunks outlook: taking the abstractions of academic
  conferences and making them concrete
• One thing Eric Hughes and I discussed at length (for 3 days
  of nearly nonstop talk, in May, 1992) was the glacial rate
  of progress in converting the cryptographic primitive
  operations of the academic crypto conferences into actual,
  workable code. The basic RSA algorithm was by then barely
  available, more than 15 years after invention. (This was
  before PGP 2.0, and PGP 1.0 was barely available and was
  disappointing, with RSA Data Security’s various products in
  limited niches.) All the neat stuff on digital cash, DC-
  Nets, bit commitment, olivioius transfer, digital mixes,
  and so on, was completely absent, in terms of avialable
  code or «crypto ICs» (to borrow Brad Cox’s phrase). If it
  took 10-15 years for RSA to really appear in the real
  world, how long would it take some of the exciting stuff to
  get out?
• We thought it would be a neat idea to find ways to reify
  these things, to get actual running code. As it happened,
  PGP 2.0 appeared the week of our very first meeting, and
  both the Kleinpaste/Julf and Cypherpunks remailers were
  quick, if incomplete, implementations of David Chaum’s 1981
  «digital mixes.» (Right on schedule, 11 years later.)
• Sadly, most of the abstractions of cryptology remain
  residents of academic space, with no (available)
  implementations in the real world. (To be sure, I suspect
  many people have cobbled-together versions of many of these
  things, in C code, whatever. But their work is more like
  building sand castles, to be lost when they graduate or
  move on to other projects. This is of course not a problem
  unique to cryptology.)
• Today, various toolkits and libraries are under
  development. Henry Strickland (Strick) is working on a
  toolkit based on John Ousterhout’s «TCL» system (for Unix),
  and of course RSADSI provides RSAREF. Pr0duct Cypher has
  «PGP Tools.» Other projects are underway. (My own longterm
  interest here is in building objects which act as the
  cryptography papers would have them act…building block
  objects. For this, I’m looking at Smalltalk of some
  flavor.)
• It is still the case that most of the modern crypto papers
  discuss theoretical abstractions that are not even close
  to being implemented as reusable, robust objects or
  routines. Closing the gap between theoretical papers and
  practical realization is a major Cypherpunk emphasis.
  4.5.5. Prototypes, even if fatally flawed, allow for evolutionary
  learning and improvement. Think of it as engineering in
  action.

4.6. Technological empowerment
4.6.1. (more needed here….)
4.6.2. As Sandy Sandfort notes, «The real point of Cypherpunks is
that it’s better to use strong crypto than weak crypto or no
crypto at all. Our use of crypto doesn’t have to be totally
bullet proof to be of value. Let them worry about the
technicalities while we make sure they have to work harder
and pay more for our encrypted info than they would if it
were in plaintext.» [S.S. 1994-07-01]

4.7. Free Speech Issues
4.7.1. Speech

• «Public speech is not a series of public speeches, but
  rather one’s own
  words spoken openly and without shame….I desire a society
  where all may speak freely about whatever topic they will.
  I desire that all people might be able to choose to whom
  they wish to speak and to whom they do not wish to speak.
  I desire a society where all people may have an assurance
  that their words are directed only at those to whom they
  wish. Therefore I oppose all efforts by governments to
  eavesdrop and to become unwanted listeners.» [Eric Hughes,
  1994-02-22]
• «The government has no right to restrict my use of
  cryptography in any way. They may not forbid me to use
  whatever ciphers I may like, nor may they require me to use
  any that I do not like.» [Eric Hughes, 1993-06-01]
  4.7.2. «Should there be any limits whatsoever on a person’s use of
  cryptography?»
• No. Using the mathematics of cryptography is merely the
  manipulation of symbols. No crime is involved, ipso facto.
• Also, as Eric Hughes has pointed out, this is another of
  those questions where the normative «should» or «shouldn’t»
  invokes «the policeman inside.» A better way to look at is
  to see what steps people can take to make any question of
  «should» this be allowed just moot.
• The «crimes» are actual physical acts like murder and
  kidnapping. The fact that crypto may be used by plotters
  and planners, thus making detection more difficult, is in
  no way different from the possibility that plotters may
  speak in an unusual language to each other (ciphers), or
  meet in a private home (security), or speak in a soft voice
  when in public (steganography). None of these things should
  be illegal, and none of them would be enforceable except
  in the most rigid of police states (and probably not even
  there).
• «Crypto is thoughtcrime» is the effect of restricting
  cryptography use.
  4.7.3. Democracy and censorship
• Does a community have the right to decide what newsgroups
  or magazines it allows in its community? Does a nation have
  the right to do the same? (Tennessee, Iraq, Iran, France.
  Utah?)
• This is what bypasses with crypto are all about: taking
  these majoritarian morality decisions out of the hands of
  the bluenoses. Direct action to secure freedoms.

4.8. Privacy Issues
4.8.1. «Is there an agenda here beyond just ensuring privacy?»

• Definitely! I think I can safely say that for nearly all
  political persuasions on the Cypherpunks list. Left, right,
  libertarian, or anarchist, there’s much more to to strong
  crypto than simple privacy. Privacy qua privacy is fairly
  uninteresting. If all one wants is privacy, one can simply
  keep to one’s self, stay off high-visibility lists like
  this, and generally stay out of trouble.
• Many of us see strong crypto as the key enabling technology
  for a new economic and social system, a system which will
  develop as cyberspace becomes more important. A system
  which dispenses with national boundaries, which is based on
  voluntary (even if anonymous) free trade. At issue is the
  end of governments as we know them today. (Look at
  interactions on the Net–on this list, for example–and
  you’ll see many so-called nationalities, voluntary
  interaction, and the almost complete absence of any «laws.»
  Aside from their being almost no rules per se for the
  Cypherpunks list, there are essentially no national laws
  that are invokable in any way. This is a fast-growing
  trend.)
• Motivations for Cypherpunks
  • Privacy. If maintaining privacy is the main goal, there’s
    not much more to say. Keep a low profile, protect data,
    avoid giving out personal information, limit the number
    of bank loans and credit applications, pay cash often,
    etc.
  • Privacy in activism.
  • New Structures. Using cryptographic constructs to build
    new political, economic, and even social structures.
  • Political: Voting, polling, information access,
    whistleblowing
  • Economic: Free markets, information markets, increased
    liquidity, black markets
  • Social: Cyberspatial communities, True Names
• Publically inspectable algorithms always win out over
  private, secret algorithms
  4.8.2. «What is the American attitude toward privacy and
  encryption?»
• There are two distinct (and perhaps simultaneously held) views that have long been found in the American psyche:
  • «A man’s home is his castle.» «Mind your own business.»
    The frontier and Calvinist sprit of keeping one’s
    business to one’s self.
  • «What have you got to hide?» The nosiness of busybodies,
    gossiping about what others are doing, and being
    suspicious of those who try too hard to hide what they
    are doing.
• The American attitude currently seems to favor privacy over police powers, as evidenced by a Time-CNN poll:
  • «In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last
    week by Yankelovich Partners, two-thirds said it was more
    important to protect the privacy of phone calls than to
    preserve the ability of police to conduct wiretaps. When
    informed about the Clipper Chip, 80% said they opposed
    it.» [Philip Elmer-Dewitt, «Who Should Keep the Keys,»
    TIME, 1994-03-04.]
• The answer given is clearly a function of how the question
  is phrased. Ask folks if they favor «unbreakable
  encryption» or «fortress capabilities» for terrorists,
  pedophiles, and other malefactors, and they’ll likely give
  a quite different answer. It is this tack now being taken
  by the Clipper folks. Watch out for this!
• Me, I have no doubts.
• As Perry Metzger puts it, «I find the recent disclosures
  concerning U.S. Government testing of the effects of
  radiation on unknowing human subjects to be yet more
  evidence that you simply cannot trust the government with
  your own personal safety. Some people, given positions of
  power, will naturally abuse those positions, often even if
  such abuse could cause severe injury or death. I see little
  reason, therefore, to simply «trust» the U.S. government —
  and given that the U.S. government is about as good as they
  get, its obvious that NO government deserves the blind
  trust of its citizens. «Trust us, we will protect you»
  rings quite hollow in the face of historical evidence.
  Citizens must protect and preserve their own privacy — the
  government and its centralized cryptographic schemes
  emphatically cannot be trusted.» [P.M., 1994-01-01]
  4.8.3. «How is 1994 like 1984?»
• The television ad for Clipper: «Clipper–why 1994 will be
  like 1984″
• As Mike Ingle puts it:
  • 1994: Wiretapping is privacy
    Secrecy is openness
    Obscurity is security
    4.8.4. «We anticipate that computer networks will play a more and
    more important role in many parts of our lives. But this
    increased computerization brings tremendous dangers for
    infringing privacy. Cypherpunks seek to put into place
    structures which will allow people to preserve their privacy
    if they choose. No one will be forced to use pseudonyms or
    post anonymously. But it should be a matter of choice how
    much information a person chooses to reveal about himself
    when he communicates. Right now, the nets don’t give you
    that much choice. We are trying to give this power to
    people.» [Hal Finney, 1993-02-23]
    4.8.5. «If cypherpunks contribute nothing else we can create a real
    privacy advocacy group, advocating means of real self-
    empowerment, from crypto to nom de guerre credit cards,
    instead of advocating further invasions of our privacy as the
    so-called privacy advocates are now doing!» [Jim Hart, 1994-
    09-08]

4.9. Education Issues
4.9.1. «How can we get more people to use crypto?»

• telling them about the themes of Cypherpunks
• surveillance, wiretapping, Digital Telephony, Clipper, NSA,
  FinCEN, etc….these things tend to scare a lot of folks
• making PGP easier to use, better integration with mailers,
  etc.
• (To be frank, convincing others to protect themselves is
  not one of my highest priorities. Then why have I written
  this megabyte-plus FAQ? Good question. Getting more users
  is a general win, for obvious reasons.)
  4.9.2. «Who needs to encrypt?»
• Corporations
  • competitors…fax transmissions
  • foreign governments
  • Chobetsu, GCHQ, SDECE, Mossad, KGB
  • their own government
  • NSA intercepts of plans, investments
• Activist Groups
  • Aryan Nation needs to encrypt, as FBI has announced their
    intent to infiltrate and subvert this group
  • RU-486 networks
  • Amnesty International
• Terrorists and Drug Dealers
  • clearly are clueless at times (Pablo Escobar using a
    cellphone!)
  • Triads, Russian Mafia, many are becoming crypto-literate
  • (I’ve been appoached-‘nuff said)
• Doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists, etc.
  • to preserve records against theft, snooping, casual
    examination, etc.
  • in many cases, a legal obligation has been attached to
    this (notably, medical records)
  • the curious situation that many people are essentially
    required to encrypt (no other way to ensure standards
    are met) and yet various laws exists to limit
    encryption…ITAR, Clipper, EES
  • (Clipper is a partial answer, if unsatisfactory)
    4.9.3. «When should crypto be used?»
• It’s an economic matter. Each person has to decide when to
  use it, and how. Me, I dislike having to download messages
  to my home machine before I can read them. Others use it
  routinely.

4.10. Libertarian Issues
4.10.1. A technological approach to freedom and privacy:

• «Freedom is, practically, given as much (or more) by the
  tools we can build to protect it, as it is by our ability
  to convince others who violently disagree with us not to
  attack us. On the Internet we have tools like anon
  remailers and PGP that give us a great deal of freedom
  from coercion even in the midst of censors. Thus, these
  tools piss off fans of centralized information control, the
  defenders of the status quo, like nothing else on the
  Internet.» [an50@desert.hacktic.nl (Nobody), libtech-
  l@netcom.com, 1994-06-08]
• Duncan Frissell, as usual, put it cogently:
  • «If I withhold my capital from some country or enterprise
    I am not threatening to kill anyone. When a «Democratic
    State» decides to do something, it does so with armed
    men. If you don’t obey, they tend to shoot….[I]f
    technological change enhances the powers of individuals,
    their power is enhanced no matter what the government
    does. «If the collective is weakened and the individual
    strengthened by the fact that I have the power of cheap
    guns, cars, computers, telecoms, and crypto then the
    collective has been weakened and we should ease the
    transition to a society based on voluntary rather than
    coerced interaction. «Unless you can figure out a new, improved way of
    controlling others; you have no choice.» [D.F., Decline
    and Fall, 1994-06-19]
    4.10.2. «They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
    temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.»
    [Benjamin Franklin]
    4.10.3. a typical view of government
• «As I see it, it’s always a home for bullies masquerading
  as a collective defense. Sometimes it actually it actually
  has to perform its advertised defense function. Like naked
  quarks,
  purely defensive governments cannot exist. They are
  bipolar by nature, with some poles (i.e., the bullying
  part) being «more equal than others.» [Sandy Sandfort, 1994-
  09-06]
  4.10.4. Sadly, several of our speculative scenarios for various laws
  have come to pass. Even several of my own, such as:
• «(Yet Another May Prediction Realized)…The text of a
  «digital stalking bill» was just sent to Cyberia-l.» [L.
  Todd Masco, 1994-08-31] (This was a joking prediction I
  made that «digital stalking» would soon be a crime; there
  had been news articles about the horrors of such
  cyberspatial stalkings, regardless of there being no real
  physical threats, so this move is not all that surprising.
  Not surprising in an age when free speech gets outlawed as
  «assault speech.»)
  4.10.5. «Don’t tread on me.»
  4.10.6. However, it’s easy to get too negative on the situation, to
  assume that a socialist state is right around the corner. Or
  that a new Hitler will come to power. These are unlikely
  developments, and not only because of strong crypto.
  Financial markets are putting constraints on how fascist a
  government can get…the international bond markets, for
  example, will quickly react to signs like this. (This is the
  theory, at least.)
  4.10.7. Locality of reference, cash, TANSTAAFL, privacy
• closure, local computation, local benefits
• no accounting system needed
• markets clear
• market distortions like rationing, coupons, quotas, all
  require centralized record-keeping
• anything that ties economic transactions to identity
  (rationing, entitlements, insurance) implies identity-
  tracking, credentials, etc.
• Nonlocality also dramatically increases the opportunities
  for fraud, for scams and con jobs
  • because something is being promised for future delivery
    (the essence of many scams) and is not verifiable locally
  • because «trust» is invoked
• Locality also fixes the «policeman inside» problem: the
  costs of decisions are borne by the decider, not by others.

4.11. Crypto Anarchy
4.11.1. The Crypto Anarchy Principle: Strong crypto permits
unbreakable encrypion, unforgeable signatures, untraceable
electronic messages, and unlinkable pseudonomous identities.
This ensures that some transactions and communications can be
entered into only voluntarily. External force, law, and
regulation cannot be applied. This is «anarchy,» in the sense
of no outside rulers and laws. Voluntary arrangements, back-
stopped by voluntarily-arranged institutions like escrow
services, will be the only form of rule. This is «crypto
anarchy.»
4.11.2. crypto allows a return to contracts that governments cannot
breach

• based on reputation, repeat business
• example: ordering illegal material untraceably and
  anonymously,,,governments are powerless to do anything
• private spaces, with the privacy enforced via cryptographic
  permissions (access credentials)
• escrows (bonds)
  4.11.3. Technological solutions over legalistic regulations
• Marc Ringuette summarized things nicely:
  • «What we’re after is some «community standards» for
    cyberspace, and what I’m suggesting is the fairly
    libertarian standard that goes like this: » Prefer technological solutions and self-protection
    solutions
    over rule-making, where they are feasible. «This is based on the notion that the more rules there
    are, the more people will call for the «net police» to
    enforce them. If we can encourage community standards
    which emphasize a prudent level of self-protection, then
    we’ll be able to make do with fewer rules and a less
    intrusive level of policing.»[Marc Ringuette, 1993-03-14]
• Hal Finney has made cogent arguments as to why we should
  not become too complacent about the role of technology vis-
  a-vis politics. He warns us not to grow to confident:
  • «Fundamentally, I believe we will have the kind of
    society that most people want. If we want freedom and
    privacy, we must persuade others that these are worth
    having. There are no shortcuts. Withdrawing into
    technology is like pulling the blankets over your head.
    It feels good for a while, until reality catches up. The
    next Clipper or Digital Telephony proposal will provide a
    rude awakening.» [Hal Finney, POLI: Politics vs
    Technology, 1994-01-02]
• «The idea here is that the ultimate solution to the low
  signal-to-noise ratio on the nets is not a matter of
  forcing people to «stand behind their words». People can
  stand behind all kinds of idiotic ideas. Rather, there
  will need to be developed better systems for filtering news
  and mail, for developing «digital reputations» which can be
  stamped on one’s postings to pass through these smart
  filters, and even applying these reputations to pseudonyms.
  In such a system, the fact that someone is posting or
  mailing pseudonymously is not a problem, since nuisance
  posters won’t be able to get through.» [Hal Finney, 1993-
  02-23]
  4.11.4. Reputations
  4.11.5. I have a moral outlook that many will find unacceptable or
  repugnant. To cut to the chase: I support the killing of
  those who break contracts, who steal in serious enough ways,
  and who otherwise commit what I think of as crimes.
• I don’t mean this abstractly. Here’s an example:
  • Someone is carrying drugs. He knows what he’s involved
    in. He knows that theft is punishable by death. And yet
    he steals some of the merchandise.
  • Dealers understand that they cannot tolerate this, that
    an example must be made, else all of their employees will
    steal.
• Understand that I’m not talking about the state doing the
  killing, nor would I do the killing. I’m just saying such
  things are the natural enforcement mechanism for such
  markets. Realpolitik.
• (A meta point: the drug laws makes things this way.
  Legalize all drugs and the businesses would be more like
  «ordinary» businesses.)
• In my highly personal opinion, many people, including most
  Congressrodents, have committed crimes that earn them the
  death penalty; I will not be sorry to see anonymous
  assassination markets used to deal with them.
  4.11.6. Increased espionage will help to destroy nation-state-empires
  like the U.S., which has gotten far too bloated and far too
  dependent on throwing its weight around; nuclear «terrorism»
  may knock out a few cities, but this may be a small price to
  pay to undermine totally the socialist welfare states that
  have launched so many wars this century.

4.12. Loose Ends
4.12.1. «Why take a «no compromise» stance?»

• Compromise often ends up in the death of a thousand cuts.
  Better to just take a rejectionist stance.
• The National Rifle Association (NRA) learned this lesson
  the hard way. EFF may eventually learn it; right now they
  appear to be in the «coopted by the power center» mode,
  luxuriating in their inside-the-Beltway access to the Veep,
  their flights on Air Force One, and their general
  schmoozing with the movers and shakers…getting along by
  going along.
• Let’s not compromise on basic issues. Treat censorship as a
  problem to be routed around (as John Gilmore suggests), not
  as something that needs to be compromised on. (This is
  directed at rumblings about how the Net needs to «police
  itself,» by the «reasonable» censorship of offensive posts,
  by the «moderation» of newsgroups, etc. What should concern
  us is the accomodation of this view by well-meaning civil
  liberties groups, which are apparently willing to play a
  role in this «self-policing» system. No thanks.)
• (And since people often misunderstand this point, I’m not
  saying private companies can’t set whatever policies they
  wish, that moderated newsgroups can’t be formed, etc.
  Private arrangements are just that. The issue is when
  censorship is forced on those who have no other
  obligations. Government usually does this, often aided and
  abetted by corporations and lobbying groups. This is what
  we need to fight. Fight by routing around, via technology.)
  4.12.2. The inherent evils of democracy
• To be blunt about it, I’ve come to despise the modern
  version of democracy we have. Every issue is framed in
  terms of popular sentiment, in terms of how the public
  would vote. Mob rule at its worst.
• Should people be allowed to wear blue jeans? Put it to a
  vote. Can employers have a policy on blue jeans? Pass a
  law. Should health care be provided to all? Put it to a
  vote. And so on, whittling away basic freedoms and rights.
  A travesty. The tyranny of the majority.
• De Toqueville warned of this when he said that the American
  experiment in democracy would last only until citizens
  discovered they could pick the pockets of their neighbors
  at the ballot box.
• But maybe we can stop this nonsense. I support strong
  crypto (and its eventual form, crypto anarchy) because it
  undermines this form of democracy. It takes some (and
  perhaps many) transactions out of the realm of popularity
  contests, beyond the reach of will of the herd. (No, I am
  not arguing there will be a complete phase change. As the
  saying goes, «You can’t eat cyberspace.» But a lot of
  consulting, technical work, programming, etc., can in fact
  be done with crypto anarchic methods, with the money gained
  transferred in a variety of ways into the «real world.»
  More on this elsewhere.)
• Crypto anarchy effectively allows people to pick and choose which laws they support, at least in cyberspatial contexts. It empowers people to break the local bonds of their majoritarian normative systems and decide for themselves which laws are moral and which are bullshit.
  • I happen to have faith that most people will settle on a
    relatively small number of laws that they’ll (mostly)
    support, a kind of Schelling point in legal space.
    4.12.3. «Is the Cypherpunks agenda too extreme?»
• Bear in mind that most of the «Cypherpunks agenda,» to the
  extent we can identify it, is likely to provoke ordinary
  citizens into outrage. Talk of anonymous mail, digital
  money, money laundering, information markets, data havens,
  undermining authority, transnationalism, and all the rest
  (insert your favorite idea) is not exactly mainstream.
  4.12.4. «Crypto Anarchy sounds too wild for me.»
• I accept that many people will find the implications of
  crypto anarchy (which follows in turn from the existence of
  strong cryptography, via the Crypto Anarchy Principle) to
  be more than they can accept.
• This is OK (not that you need my OK!). The house of
  Cypherpunks has many rooms.

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