Transcript of David Friedman's Will Encryption Protect Privacy and Make Government Obsolete?

Tue May 22 10:34:22 EDT 2001

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Date:         Tue, 22 May 2001 01:56:40 -0400
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From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt at COIL.COM>
Subject:      Transcript of David Friedman's Will Encryption Protect Privacy
              and Make Government Obsolete?
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"WILL ENCRYPTION PROTECT PRIVACY AND MAKE GOVERNMENT OBSOLETE?" --
David Friedman Transcript Now Online

Someone once said that the move toward civilization coincided with
the move toward privacy.

New advances in information technology allow the possibility of
greater privacy, but they also make it easier for government
bureaucrats, criminals, and other unwanted intruders to snoop into
your private life. Will privacy-enhancing technology outpace
privacy-threatening technology? Will freedom and civilization thereby
advance? Or will the new technology strengthen the rule of Big
Brother?

Economist and legal scholar David D. Friedman addressed these and
related issues in his recent Independent Policy Forum talk, "Will
Encryption Protect Privacy and Make Government Obsolete?" -- a
transcription of which is now available on the Independent Institute
website.

Leery of predicting the future, Prof. Friedman said that he would not
forecast beyond 30 years -- after that, all bets are off. For the
coming three decades, however, he predicts that "public key
encryption," a young technology increasingly used in e-commerce, is
likely to promote privacy -- unless the government acts immediately
to control its use.

Rather than control what people do with personal information about
you, public key encryption lets you decide with whom you want to
share that information. With it, we can better ensure that financial
information, health records, and other information will only go to
those we deem are on a need-to-know basis.

Further, public key encryption -- along with e-mail re-mailers -- can
promote anonymity, making it increasingly possible for you to buy and
sell over the Internet without the taxman knowing about it. And
"anonymous" companies in cyberspace can easily build a solid
reputation needed to gain a loyal customer base. Thus we may soon
have an underground cyber-economy that rivals the size of underground
economy in the real world.

Public key encryption also acts as a virtual Second Amendment,
according to Friedman. Just as the Second Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution institutionalized the self-defense of the citizenry
against a federal tyranny, so public key encryption will
institutionalize the self-defense of the citizenry against government
propaganda. Americans (and citizens of other countries) will be
better armed with the truth. Information about government
encroachment will be easier to spread and thereby help keep it in
check.

For a transcript of David Friedman's talk, "Will Encryption Protect
Privacy and Make Government Obsolete?" see
http://www.independent.org/tii/lighthouse/LHLink3-20-6.html.

For more on privacy, see:

"Freedom of Speech, Information Privacy, and the Troubling
Implications of a Right to Stop People from Speaking About You" by
Eugene Volokh, Independent Institute Working Paper #14
http://www.independent.org/tii/lighthouse/LHLink3-20-7.html

"Watching You: Systematic Federal Surveillance of Ordinary Americans"
by Charlotte Twight (THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW, Fall 1999)
http://www.independent.org/tii/lighthouse/LHLink3-20-8.html

"Information Technology as a Universal Solvent for Removing State
Stains" by David R. Henderson (THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW, Spring 2000)
http://www.independent.org/tii/lighthouse/LHLink3-20-9.html

R.W. Bradford's review of PRIVACY IN THE INFORMATION AGE by Fred H.
Cate (THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW, Spring 1999)
http://www.independent.org/tii/lighthouse/LHLink3-20-10.html

"Cryptography versus Big Brother" and "Internet Encryption and the
Second Amendment," by Alex Tabarrok, research director of The
Independent Institute
http://www.independent.org/tii/lighthouse/LHLink3-20-11.html
http://www.independent.org/tii/lighthouse/LHLink3-20-12.html.

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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
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"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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