Re: Sen. Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshire) called for a global prohibition on encryption

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Fri Sep 14 2001 - 12:11:52 MDT


On Fri, Sep 14, 2001 at 10:32:54AM -0700, J. R. Molloy wrote:
> From: "Anders Sandberg" <asa@nada.kth.se>
> > Note that we now are essentially back to
> > square one with the clipper chip
>
> Right, the clipper chip and other forms of individualist rights infringement
> are on the way. Now the important issue is whether ultimate control of these
> socially invasive technologies goes to political entities which are infected
> with religious memes or extropic memes. To phrase it differently, we can't
> stop implementation of these new technologies, so we should consider
> influencing who gets control of them. Do we want Big Brother to be a religious
> fanatic, a megalomaniac, a transhumanist, an extropic scientist, or a
> Superintelligent machine?

None of the above. You make the fundamental mistake of assuming a
technology has to be controlled by somebody. Who controls computers or
cars today? They are in the hands of many people who use them for many
different things - some legal, some illegal. The same goes for most
socially invasive technologies: they could (and should) be in the
hands of many, not just a specific group. In the case of
clipper-chip like systems the whole idea is to have one standard
everybody has to implement and obey, which is controlled by a select
controlling group. In this case the ideal controller is nobody: don't
implement the system at all - if people like the idea of key escrow,
let them implement systems but never make them mandatory.

I consider that the most extropic way of handling these technologies.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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