Heresy at an Internet Privacy Conference By John Schwartz Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday , April 6, 2000 TORONTO Ð It was a subversive act. The setting: the tenth annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference Ð the premier annual gathering for those interested in privacy and civil liberties in the online age. The featured speaker: Novelist Neal Stephenson, a revered figure among the techie set for such works as "Snow Crash" and "Cryptonomicon" Ð books infused not just with science and technology, but also with wit and insightful social commentary. The message: Privacy? Big Brother? Get over it. It was a heretical point to make at the conference Ð known as CFP Ð which has long been the kind of place where online counterculture, cyber-cops and corporate suits all come together to discuss such issues as encryption, the First Amendment and hacking. Earlier in the day, attendees had heard a presentation by Commissioner Mozelle W. Thompson of the privacy-minded Federal Trade Commission; she spoke after a session entitled "Privacy Commissioners: Powermongers, Pragmatists or Patsies?" "Where else do you find this mix of people in one room?" asked Mark Eckenwiler, senior counsel with the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property section of the Department of Justice. "It's a carnival sideshow!" Speaking last night after the annual presentation of the "Orwell Awards," Stephenson challenged the more than 1,000 people who had gathered from around the world to focus their attention less on installing encryption software against the vague threat of snooping by Big Brother, a reassuringly simple fantasy of a totalitarian state, and more on the very real pattern of injustice brought to bear on people through employers and other institutions. Stephenson said he was less worried these days about broad, theoretical privacy issues than about a recent incident in which a stray bullet crashed through a window at a friend's house and narrowly missed a sleeping child. The techie community with its libertarian bent tends to fret about Big Brotherly intrusions into our lives to the exclusion of other problems, he said. Referring to our hominid ancestors, Stephenson joked, "When you're frightened of hyenas all the time, all you think about are hyena defenses." He illustrated his point by talking about, among other things, the spread of cheap video cameras hooked up to the Internet: An era of widespread surveillance, he said, was on its way. But instead of automatically condemning that Orwellian notion, he suggested that the assembled engineers and coders might work to make the brave new video world work for us all, to enhance safety and security though a kind of global neighborhood watch. By trying to work with such technologies instead of simply condemning them, he said, trusted friends in London could keep an eye on your front door here in the states, checking now and then and alerting the cops if they spot a break-in attempt. What are those larger threats worthy of the updated focus? Stephenson suggested that his listeners tackle the problem of injustice, large and small. Citing the works of theologian Walter Wink, Stephenson noted that people are treated unjustly not just by government, but by their employers, their families and other institutions. Big Brother, a convenient fiction, is unchanging and unchangeable; institutions, he said, can be reformed. He compared the current state of the Internet to the process of home-brewing beer: heating vats of sugar water until they are sterile and letting them cool enough to toss in yeast at just the right moment. That yeasty moment when everything in the vat changes is the kind of potent moment software designers should try to hit to make technology more beneficial for us all, he said. The audience listened politely and applauded with warmth when Stephenson concluded his remarks. Former hacker Kevin Poulson, editorial director for SecurityFocus.com, a computer security company, said he was impressed Ð but was unlikely to give the novelist a hard time, having been a fan since reading "Snow Crash" while serving a five-year prison term for computer crimes. He said he comes to CFP not so much for speeches like Stephenson's, but for the questions that came afterward. A quiet man in a suit rose to dispute Stephenson's points about cryptography and why people use it. The questioner was Phil Zimmerman, who created a free program for encrypting data and communications known as Pretty Good Privacy. He argued that he had not created the program, which has spread around the world via the Internet, to feed the paranoid fantasies of "libertarian nutsos looking down a gunsight." Instead, Zimmerman said, he hoped to give people under authoritarian regimes tools of freedom from scrutiny. "It was a yeast-throwing exercise," he said. "This is the only place in the world where Neal Stephenson would meet and have an exchange with Phil Zimmerman in a public forum!" Poulson said excitedly. After his speech, Stephenson said in an interview that he had great respect for software engineers like Zimmerman, who have brought a greater measure of privacy to millions. But, he said, "That's my job here Ð to come up and challenge the assumptions. It's not 'Let's all get plastered and agree with each other.'" Regulars complain that the proceedings have grown more tame over the years, and that a population that used to be marked by geekiness is now looking positively hip and stylish. It's easy to see why: Jokes that used to bring down the house in the past might have been a pun based on a Unix command; today you can get an easy laugh with a line about IPOs. Time changes everything, but not as much as money. © 2000 The Washington Post Company
