True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Cypherpunks,” a play on “cyberpunk” and on the British spelling “cypher.” The name stuck, and the Cypherpunks mailing list has been active ever since. It was on this list that several of the most important security breaches in Netscape and other Internet programs were revealed, and the Cypherpunks list has played an important role in the ongoing cryptography debate, including fruitful discussions of the Clipper chip, key escrow, export laws, private access to strong cryptography, the implications of digital money, and other issues. We were also fortunate that Phil Zimmermann’s Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP, appeared in a usable form just as we were getting started. PGP is the leading user-friendly encryption program, available on nearly all platforms, and it was used as a building block for many of the cryptographic tools we and others developed.
    The Cypherpunks group is also a good example of a “virtual community.” Scattered around the world, communicating electronically in matters of minutes, and seemingly oblivious of local laws, the Cypherpunks group is indeed a community; a virtual one, with its own rules and its own norms for behavior. Some members use pseudonyms, and use anonymous remailers to communicate with the list, using PGP to digitally sign posts. These digital pseudonyms are in some sense their true names, their “true nyms.” On the Cypherpunks list, a number of well-respected nyms have appeared and are thought of no less highly than are their “real” colleagues. The whole subject of digitally authenticated reputations, and the reputation capital that accumulates or is affected by the opinions of others, is one that combines economics, game theory, psychology, and expectations. Reputations play a critical role in how anonymity and pseudonyms work in cyberspace; many of the predicted problems with nyms vanish when reputations are taken into account.
    There were several books we frequently recommended to new members: True Names led the list, along with John Brunner’s Shockwave Rider, Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, Hakim Bey’s TAZ, and, of course, various cryptography and computer references, notably Bruce Schneier’s Applied Cryptography. At our first meeting, in fact, we simulated some of the notions out of “True Names,” using cryptographic protocols. Most of the issues about pseudonyms, digital personas, and anonymity have since been explored directly using “Cypherpunks remailers” and related technologies.
    Anonymous Remailers
    Anonymous remailers, also called digital mixes, provide an excellent example of the possibilities inherent in cryptographic technology. David Chaum originally developed most of the important ideas in a 1981 paper on “Untraceable E-Mail,” years before e-mail achieved the wide prominence it now has. And he later refined the ideas in a paper on so-called “DC-Nets,” an interesting topic a bit beyond the scope of this article.
    There are many reasons people may wish to occasionally communicate without being traced or identified. A digital pseudonym is obviously useless if e-mail programs identify the origin of e-mail. People may wish to be anonymous for many reasons: privacy, fear of reprisal by employers or other groups, avoidance of profiles of their activities and interests, posting to controversial newsgroups or support groups (such as “alt.recovery” or rape and incest recovery groups), whistleblowing, and floating of controversial ideas. Writers have long used pseudonyms for some of the same reasons. (And the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1956 that writers may not be compelled to put their true names on their writing.)
    To see how anonymous remailers work, imagine a person—call her Alice—trying to avoid being followed by someone—call him Bob. Wherever she goes, Bob follows. As she enters a store, Bob