Elon University

Archives: Expert Predictions

Achieving Electronic Privacy

Digital credentials would be both easier for individuals to obtain and to show and cheaper for organizations to issue and to authenticate. People would no longer need to fill out long and revealing forms. Instead their representatives would convince organizations that they meet particular requirements without disclosing any more than the simple fact of qualification. Because such credentials reveal no unnecessary information, people would be willing to use them even in contexts where they would not willingly show identification … They may also acquire negative credentials, which they would prefer to conceal: felony convictions, license suspensions or statements of pending bankruptcy. In many cases, individuals will give organizations the right to inflict negative credentials on them in return for some service.

Crypto Rebels

Public awareness of these issues will be raised only by making the tools available. “If you can’t demonstrate stuff, it’s hard to explain. If we flood the world with these [encryption] tools, that’s going to make a big difference.”

Suggested Readings and Prose

By the end of the decade [the year 2000], we will very likely have a highly robust and widespread infrastructure in place for purpose of telecommuting, information gathering and exchange, electronic commerce, remote teaching and learning, and general education. We may well find ourselves using the system for voice and video applications as well as group activities.

Achieving Electronic Privacy

Most people would probably keep backup copies of their keys, electronic bank notes and other data; they could recover their funds if a representative were lost or stolen. Using a representative, however, would establish relationships with different organizations under different digital pseudonyms. Each of them can recognize him unambiguously, but none of their records can be linked.

Crypto Rebels

The flood [of cryptography tools] indeed is coming, and the agency charged with safeguarding and mastering encryption technologies is about to be thrust into a cypher age in which messages that once were clear will require tedious cracking – and may not be crackable at all.

Achieving Electronic Privacy

People would in effect give a different (but definitively verifiable) pseudonym to every organization they do business with and so make dossiers impossible. They could pay for goods in untraceable electronic cash or present digital credentials that serve the function of a banking passbook, driver’s license or voter registration card without revealing their identity. At the same time, organizations would benefit from increased security and lower record-keeping costs.

Suggested Readings and Prose

Concerns for security have produced concerns for privacy, since breaches of security can lead directly to loss of privacy (and, of course, loss or damage to data, software and information files). What is still in a considerable state of flux is the legal framework in which abuses of the Internet and its services are actionable in civil or even criminal senses.

Crypto Rebels

Until the long-awaited alternative for electronic crypto on the Internet, Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM), is released – after five years of planning, the release seems near – PGP [Phil Zimmermann’s program, known as Pretty Good Privacy] is one of the only games in town.

Cyberspace: The Line Between the Made and the Born is being Blurred. Jim McClellan on Kevin Kelly’s Latest Theories

The scenario I’m playing with now is that the Internet might die. You can imagine a situation in which there’s 200 million people on the Internet trying to send e-mail messages and the whole thing just grinds to a halt. Its own success just kills it. In the meantime, a telephone company steps in and offers e-mail for $5 a month, no traffic jams and it’s reliable. I hope it doesn’t happen, but it’s a scenario one has to consider.