Unfettered cryptography does have its trade-offs. The same codes that protect journalists and accountants will abet the security of mobsters, child molesters, and terrorists. And if everyone encrypts, there certainly would be a weakening of our intelligence agencies, and possibly our national security.
The outcome of this struggle may determine the amount of freedom our society will grant us in the 21st century. To the Cypherpunks, freedom is an issue worth some risk. “Arise,” urges one of their numbers, “You have nothing to lose but your barbed-wire fences.”
We have a massive effort under way in the telecommunications conference to say we are going to tell you what to think; we are going to tell you what to do when you go online. Do you know why? I am willing to bet that three-quarters of the Congress do not have the foggiest idea how to get on the Internet.
If online providers are liable for any exposure of indecent material to children, people under the age of 18 will be shut out of this technology or relegated by the government to sanitized “kids-only” services that contain only a tiny fraction of the entire Internet. That would be the equivalent of limiting today’s students to the childhood section of the library or locking them out completely.
However this all falls out, it’s going to be critically important if whoever ends up owning this fiber has an antagonistic relationship to Microsoft or the Microsoft Network. In that event, the Internet is just cut off and dies.
While we’re wiring people up we’re destroying old cultures. It’s great to have the idea of a global village, but it can resemble (the 1950s TV show) “The Prisoner,” where everyone lives in a perfect village, but everyone is a number. Everyone is a prisoner.
Users will begin to demand better privacy measures and user-authentication. The Internet will increasingly be used to sell information … That will first take solving intellectual property issues such as how to keep someone from making an unlimited number of copies of a copyrighted document.
Ultimately, somebody has to pay for all the capacity being used.
They will find our weaknesses and exploit them to sell products. Computers will allow them to be better at it, unless we refuse to participate in alienating high-technology immediate gratification. Refuse when your online service wants you to tell them about your purchasing habits. Refuse when you are offered a free subscription in return for personal information.
TV problem-solving just distracts computer firms from their huge, and hugely demanding, opportunity to usurp phones, TVs, and video game players entirely with multimedia PCs and networks. The huge telecom and consumer firms must be enlisted in their true role: supplying networks, peripherals, and programs for the computer industry.