What sort of innovations in cryptography do you think are needed? I think we need better standards and better software, but that we can basically get along with the very straightforward collection of primitives that are used to build things like GPG today, can’t we?
I am not arguing that more innovations in cryptography are needed. I am stressing the importance of keeping cryptography research as open as possible for the sake of long-term political stability.
Can you be any clearer? You’re not arguing that we need the fruits of cryptography research, but that it’s important for some other reason than its fruits? What is that other reason?
No, you’re missing the point entirely. I’m arguing that cryptography is dangerous, and the one way to make it less dangerous is to make sure that it’s not secret.
So you’re saying that it would be OK if there were no further fruits of crypto research, but that the danger is that there will be further fruits and they won’t be public, and that poses a great danger? What sort of danger do you have in mind?
Just so you know, crypto is my specialization; AFAIK I’m the person with the most expertise in the subject here on Less Wrong. I think we’re having an “illusion of transparency” problem here, because you obviously feel you’re being clear, and my efforts to understand you feel to me like pulling teeth. In your response, please could you err on the side of over-explaining, of saying as much as possible?
the key risk for singleton is exclusive access to key-cracking technology.
So—apparently—better cryptanalysis.
Better cryptanalysis is probably not a terribly significant issue—machine intelligence would probably mostly just use robots and nanotechnology to compromise the end-points—thereby recovering the key material.
I suppose I could have been more coherent in the original post.
My claims.
1) In the future, cryptography will be a military technology as significant as e.g. nuclear weapons
2) However, how cryptography differs from conventional weapons technology is that giving everyone access to cryptography makes it less of a threat (whereas you would not want to give nukes to everyone)
3) To make cryptography less of a threat to political stability, there should be a concerted effort on the part of cryptography researchers and politicians to enforce that all cryptography research be open.
This might make more sense if you zoomed in, and talked about specific capabilities rather than “cryptography” in general. The current state of crypto is that there are off-the-shelf cyphers that are believed to be unbreakable, and they can also be combined and given larger key sizes to make extra-unbreakable versions in case of mathematical advance. There are also several publicly accessible onion networks. What new capability do you imagine being developed, which would be bad for the world iff it wasn’t open?
I don’t know what Snarles is thinking of, but there are examples that one can provide. For example, if someone finds an efficient way of factoring integers, and keeps this secret, they can probably do a lot more damage than they can if their ability is publicly known. However, I don’t see how in any substantial way that sort of worry connects with snarles’ apparent concern about singletons.
Sorry, I still don’t get it. At this point I’m going to leave this discussion here unless another Less Wrong participant thinks it’s worth my spending more time on.
What sort of innovations in cryptography do you think are needed? I think we need better standards and better software, but that we can basically get along with the very straightforward collection of primitives that are used to build things like GPG today, can’t we?
I am not arguing that more innovations in cryptography are needed. I am stressing the importance of keeping cryptography research as open as possible for the sake of long-term political stability.
Can you be any clearer? You’re not arguing that we need the fruits of cryptography research, but that it’s important for some other reason than its fruits? What is that other reason?
No, you’re missing the point entirely. I’m arguing that cryptography is dangerous, and the one way to make it less dangerous is to make sure that it’s not secret.
So you’re saying that it would be OK if there were no further fruits of crypto research, but that the danger is that there will be further fruits and they won’t be public, and that poses a great danger? What sort of danger do you have in mind?
Just so you know, crypto is my specialization; AFAIK I’m the person with the most expertise in the subject here on Less Wrong. I think we’re having an “illusion of transparency” problem here, because you obviously feel you’re being clear, and my efforts to understand you feel to me like pulling teeth. In your response, please could you err on the side of over-explaining, of saying as much as possible?
Thanks!
The post says:
So—apparently—better cryptanalysis.
Better cryptanalysis is probably not a terribly significant issue—machine intelligence would probably mostly just use robots and nanotechnology to compromise the end-points—thereby recovering the key material.
I suppose I could have been more coherent in the original post.
My claims.
1) In the future, cryptography will be a military technology as significant as e.g. nuclear weapons
2) However, how cryptography differs from conventional weapons technology is that giving everyone access to cryptography makes it less of a threat (whereas you would not want to give nukes to everyone)
3) To make cryptography less of a threat to political stability, there should be a concerted effort on the part of cryptography researchers and politicians to enforce that all cryptography research be open.
This might make more sense if you zoomed in, and talked about specific capabilities rather than “cryptography” in general. The current state of crypto is that there are off-the-shelf cyphers that are believed to be unbreakable, and they can also be combined and given larger key sizes to make extra-unbreakable versions in case of mathematical advance. There are also several publicly accessible onion networks. What new capability do you imagine being developed, which would be bad for the world iff it wasn’t open?
I don’t know what Snarles is thinking of, but there are examples that one can provide. For example, if someone finds an efficient way of factoring integers, and keeps this secret, they can probably do a lot more damage than they can if their ability is publicly known. However, I don’t see how in any substantial way that sort of worry connects with snarles’ apparent concern about singletons.
Sorry, I still don’t get it. At this point I’m going to leave this discussion here unless another Less Wrong participant thinks it’s worth my spending more time on.