This long posting summarizes the recent meeting and includes my own presentation to the meeting. Our physical meeting on Saturday in Mountain View, CA was very successful, with 35 people in attendance, most of them in the same room at the same time for the whole 6 hours (this is not always the case!). The best attendance we've ever had, or at least equalling the crowd we had for the special emergency meeting following the Clipper announcement. I think we all knew the importance of the one-year anniversary and the need to think carefully about our future direction (modulo the fact, pun intended, that we are an organizational anarchy, with little structure, diverse viewpoints, and no compelling reason to get more organized). Eric Hughes began the meeting shortly after noon. Speakers included myself, Sandy Sandfort, Nick Szabo, Dean Tribble, Whit Diffie, Russell Brand, John Gilmore, and others (I apologize to anyone I left out, as I was taking minutes of the meeting and so am relying just on my recollection). Rather than attempt to recap all that was said--and a lot gets said in six hours!--it's best that folks give their own summaries of what they said, or what others said, whatever. And they can post their handouts if they have them available in the right format...Sandy has already done this, for example. Just for quick orientation, here were some of the main themes: * GOALS. Where we have been, where we are, and where we are going. Has progress stalled, after the early results with Phil Zimmermann's PGP and with our Cypherpunks remailers? (We concluded we are mostly in a useful consolidation phase, digesting the early gains as we contemplate future directions in better remailers, digital postage and money, steganography, etc.) * POLITICS. We touched on the political aspects, especially since the "privacy, not anarchy" thread had just the List the few days before the meeting. The consensus was s friendly realization that we would not be resolving anything politically, that the socialists and Hayekians may interpret the world differently, but still agree on the need for strong cryptography. (Folks should appreciate that the physical meetings are very friendly affairs, generally much less contentious than the List can be at times...I wonder what this says about our ideas for anonymous networks? Just something to think about.) * "TAZ." Eric Hughes read a long selection from Hakim Bey's ("not his real name") "TAZ," published in 1990, and excerpted in "Mondo 2000" a while back. "TAZ" was published/helped by Dave Mandl, one of our New York City list members ("New York City?...get a rope!"). TAZ stands for "temporary autonomous zones," a kind of crypto anarchy, albeit with more of postmodernist, literary slant than what we have been pitching. (Our developments were independent, as I had seen only the Mondo excerpt, and that only a couple of years ago, while my "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto" was distributed in 1988.) * BANKS. Digital banks, offshore banking, and possible projects that are starting up. Sandy Sandfort presented material on this. There is real interest in this. We may have "Caymans Cypherpunks" or "Bahamas Cypherpunks" meetings before long. * SPECULATIVE PROJECTS. Nick Szabo presented a list of possible projects, which he recently posted to the list. Things like "the Internet Casino" (betting markets), data havens, and so on. * PRIVACY. Judi Clark, active in the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference and other Bay Area computer privacy groups, asked us for inputs to some lectures being arranged. She asked what a "secure network" should be, in terms of privacy. Ideas would fill a post by themselves, but were, as I remember them: voluntary disclosure of data (you tell only what you want made available), self-enforcement as much as possible, limited root access to systems, encryption of links whenever possible, etc. (I'm doing a poor job of summarizing this brainstorming session, though.) * PATENTS. Russell Brand, a computer scientist now attending law school, gave a 90-minute lecture on intellectual property law, with special attention to the cloud of RSA patents (set to expire 1998-2002). * LAWSUITS. John Gilmore spoke briefly about his FOIA lawsuits against the NSA and NIST (especially over the failure to produce Clipper decision documents in a timely fashion, as spelled out in the FOIA procedures) and advised us that some important hearings are coming up in San Francisco in the next month or so. He'll tell the List when the exact dates are. * NEW LANGUAGES. Dean Tribble updated us on "Joule," the secure language/operating system he and others are working on. (One of his associates, Norm Hardy, once worked for IBM on the "Harvest" computer installed at NSA in the early 60s, and detailed in Bamford's "The Puzzle Palace." Norm will give a presentation on Harvest at the next Cypherpunks meeting.) * MISC. Mark Miller strongly praised the "Metro" cover story on "Code Warriors" (the Julian Dibbell piece), noting that two major stories on Cypherunks ("Wired" cover as well) had used the American flag as a motif and had implied that strong crypto and privacy are fundamental American values and that we are cypherpatriots. Several newcomers (Sameer Parekh, Harry Bartholomew, Doug Merritt, others I apologize to for not mentioning). There was a general feeling that the importance of crypto is becoming more and more apparent every day. We've come a long way this past year. After the meeting, we adjourned to the Applewood Inn in Menlo Park for pizza, a break from the usual Chinese or Thai food. After this, several Cypherpunks were seen across the street in the huge Kepler's Books, some even buying the latest issue of "Wired" despite the fact that cryptography inexplicably went from the being #1 on the "Hot" list to not even being listed in this issue! (I guess crypto is being retired from contention, out of fairness to things like virtual reality and body piercings!) ........ Included below is the presentation I gave at the meeting. I also presented a detailed PERT chart graph of important milestones on the way to long range goals. I regret that this ASCII format is too limited to contain it, to paraphrase a French mathematician in the news lately. (Don't ask for PostScript versions...the effort of getting everything right in transmission is unwarranted by the chart.) I apologize for the occassional word wrap seen here, as I used an outliner to generate the material and the line lengths sometimes are too long. Cypherpunks--Where Do We Go From Here? I. Difficult to Set Directions A. an anarchy...no centralized control B. everyone has some axe to grind, some temporary set of priorities C. little economic motivation (and most have other jobs) II. Past, Present, Future A. Where We've Been 1. successful mailing list and monthly meetings 2. spread of crypto: Cypherpunks have helped (PGP)...publicity, an alternative forum to sci.crypt 3. remailers, encrypted remailers 4. ideas for perl scripts, mail handlers 5. general discussion, with folks of several political persuasions 6. concepts: pools, ILF, BlackNet B. Where We Are Now 1. Stalled? a) crypto protocols are hard to build, analyze, deploy b) little incentive for people to put incredible efforts in (unless they're researchers in the field)....look at effort just for PGP c) Has the "low-hanging fruit" already been picked? 2. Need to Decide on Nature of Cypherpunks C. Where We Could Go in the Future 1. Privacy Emphasis 2. Tools and Techniques Emphasis 3. Education and Lobbying Emphasis 4. Possible Directions a) Crypto Tools...make them ubiquitous "enough" so that the genie can't be put back in the bottle (1) can worry about the politics later (socialists vs. anarchocapitalists, etc.) (2) develop and deploy a variety of tools (3) attempt to implement as many "research" tools as possible (4) Commercial Opportunities! b) Education (1) educating the masses about crypto, public forums (2) this was picked by the Cambridge/MIT group as their special interest c) Politics and Lobbying (1) talking to Congressional aides and committee staffers, attending hearings, submitting briefs on proposed legislation (2) coordinating with EFF, CPSR, ACLU, etc. (3) this was picked by the Washington group as their special interest, which is compellingly appropriate (Calif. group is simply too far away) d) Legal Challenges (1) lawsuits against Skipjack, FOIA requests, etc. III. The Heart and Soul of Cypherpunks? A. Competing Goals: 1. Personal Privacy a) PGP, integration with mailers b) education 2. Reducing the Power of Institutions a) whistleblowers group b) Chaum-style credentials (vs. national ID cards, etc.) 3. Crypto Anarchy B. Common Purposes (beyond ideology) 1. Spreading strong crypto tools and knowledge a) PGP 2. Fighting government restrictions and regulations a) Clipper/Skipjack fight was a unifying experience 3. Exploring new directions in cryptology a) digital mixes, digital cash, voting b) no other groups are trying all that we're trying IV. Thesis: Strong crypto is a good thing A. Tool against governments of all flavors, left and right B. Religious freedom C. Free speech D. Personal choice V. Thesis: Crypto can become unstoppable if critical mass is reached A. analogy: the Net...too scattered, too many countries, too many degrees of freedom B. so scattered that attempts to outlaw strong crypto will be futile...no bottlenecks, no "mountain passes" (in a race to the pass, beyond which the expansion cannot be halted except by extremely repressive means) VI. The Path to Crypto Anarchy-A Personal View A. Uses: 1. remailers, anonymity 2. digital cash, for privacy and for tax evasion 3. data havens, bootleg medical treatments, information markets 4. bookies, betting, numbers games, smuggling, tax evasion 5. religious networks (digital confessionals) 6. crimes, digital hits B. Increasing Personal Privacy (under attack, of course) C. Increasing Connectivity--networks, links, speeds D. Privacy + Connectivity = Beyond Control of Governments or Institutions = Crypto Anarchy PERT chart was included at this point. -- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: by arrangement Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.