[From the EFF-Austin online newsletter, _WORD_, Issue #9]

               KEYNOTE ADDRESS : CRYPTOGRAPHY CONFERENCE

                           by Bruce Sterling

       Hello everybody.  It's quite an honor to be delivering the
keynote address -- a *thankfully brief* keynote address -- at this
conference.  I hope to clear the decks in short order, and let you
spend an engrossing afternoon, listening to an intense discussion of
complex and important public issues, by highly qualified people, who
fully understand what they're talking about.  Unlike myself.

       Before all this begins, though, I do want to establish a
context for this conference.  Let me briefly put on my professional
dunce-hat, as a popular-science writer, and try to make it clear to
you exactly what the heck is going on here today.

Cryptography.   The science and study of secret writing, especially
codes and cypher systems.  The procedures, processes, measures and
algorithms for making and using secret exchanges of information.
*Secret*  exchanges, done, made and conducted without the knowledge of
others, whether those others be governments, competitors, local, state
or federal police, private investigators, wiretappers, cellular
scanners, corporate security people, marketers, merchandisers,
journalists, public health officials, squads for public decency,
snoopy neighbors, or even your own spouse, your own parents, or your
own children.

       Cryptography is a way to confine knowledge to the initiated and
the privileged in your circle, whatever that circle might be:
corporate co-workers, fellow bureaucrats, fellow citizens, fellow
modem-users, fellow artists, fellow writers, fellow
influence-peddlers, fellow criminals, fellow software pirates, fellow
child pornographers.

       Cryptography is a way to assure the privacy of digital way to
help control the ways in which you reveal yourself to the world.  It
is also a way to turn everything inside a computer, even a computer
seized or stolen by experts, into an utterly scrambled Sanskrit that
no one but the holder of the key can read.  It is a swift, powerful,
portable method of high-level computer security.   Electronic
cryptography is potentially, perhaps, even a new form of information
economics.

       Cryptography is a very hot issue in electronic civil liberties
circles at the moment.  After years of the deepest, darkest,
never-say-anything, military spook obscurity, cryptography is out of
the closet and openly flaunting itself in the street.  Cryptography is
attracting serious press coverage.  The federal administration has
offered its own cryptographic cure-all, the Clipper Chip.
Cryptography is being discussed openly and publicly, and practiced
openly and publicly.  It is passing from the hands of giant secretive
bureaucracies, to the desktop of the individual.   Public-key
cryptography, in particular, is a strange and novel form of
cryptography which has some very powerful collateral applications and
possibilities, which can only be described as bizarre, and possibly
revolutionary.   Cryptography is happening, and happening now.

       It often seems a truism in science and technology that it takes
twenty years for anything really important to  happen:  well,
Whitfield Diffie was publishing about public-key cryptography in 1975.
The idea, the theory for much of what will be discussed today was
already in place, theoretically, in 1975.  This would suggest a target
date of 1995 for this issue to break permanently out of the arid world
of theory, and into the juicy, down-and-dirty real world of politics,
lawsuits, and money.  I rather think that this is a likely scenario.
Personally, I think the situation's gonna blow a seam.  And by
choosing to attend this EFF and EFF-Austin conference in September
1993, you are still a handy two years ahead of the curve.  You can
congratulate yourself!

       Why do I say blow a seam?  Because at this very moment, ladies
and gentlemen, today, there is a grand jury meeting in Silicon Valley,
under the auspices of two US federal attorneys and the US Customs
Service.  That grand jury is mulling over possible illegality,
possible indictments, possible heaven-knows-what, relating to supposed
export-law violations concerning this powerful cryptography
technology.  A technology so powerful that exporting cryptographic
algorithms requires the same license that our government would grant
to a professional armaments dealer.   We can envision this federal
grand jury meeting, in San Jose California, as a kind of dark salute
to our conference here in Austin, a dark salute from the forces of
the cryptographic status quo.  I can guarantee you that whatever you
hear at this conference today, is not gonna be the last you hear about
this subject.

       I can also guarantee you that the people you'll be hearing from
today are ideal people to tell you about these issues.  I wrote a book
once, partly about some of these people, so I've come to know some of
them personally.   I hope you'll forgive me, if I briefly wax all
sentimental in public about how wonderful they are.  There will be
plenty of time for us to get all hardened and dark and cynical later.
I'll be glad to help do that, because I'm pretty good at that when I
put my mind to it, but in the meantime, today, we should feel  lucky.
We are lucky enough to have some people here who can actually tell us
something useful about our future.  Our real future, the future we can
actually have, the future we'll be living in,  the future that we can
actually do something about.

       We have among us today the board of directors of the Electronic
Frontier Foundation.  They are meeting in Austin in order to pursue
strategy for their own national organization, but in the meantime,
they also have graciously agreed to appear publicly and share their
expertise and their opinions with us Austinites.  Furthermore, they
are not getting a dime out of this; they are doing it, amazingly, out
of sheer public-spiritedness.

       I'm going to introduce each of them and talk about them very
briefly.  I hope you will reserve your applause until the end.
Although these people deserve plenty of applause, we are short on
quality applause resources.  In fact, today we will be rationing
applause care, in order to assure a supply of basic, decent,
ego-boosting applause for everyone, including those unable to
privately afford top-quality applause care for the health of their own
egos.  A federal-policy in-joke for the many Washington insiders we
have in the room today.

       Very well,  on to the business at hand.  Mitch Kapor is a
cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a software designer,
a very prominent software entrepreneur, a philanthropist, a writer and
journalist, and a civil liberties activist.  In 1990, when Mr. Kapor
co-founded EFF, there was very considerable legal and constitutional
trouble in the world of cyberspace.  Mitch spoke out on these
sometimes-arcane, sometimes-obscure issues, and he spoke loudly,
repeatedly, publicly, and very effectively.  And when Mitch Kapor
finished speaking-out, those issues were no longer obscure or arcane.
This is a gift Mitch has, it seems.  Mitch Kapor has also quietly done
many good deeds for the electronic community, despite his full
personal knowledge that no good deed goes unpunished.  We very likely
wouldn't be meeting here today, if it weren't for Mitch, and anything
he says will be well worth your attention.

       Jerry Berman is the President and Director of Electronic
Frontier Foundation, which is based in Washington DC.  He is a
longtime electronic civil liberties activist, formerly the founder and
director of the Projects on Privacy and Information Technology for the
American Civil Liberties Union.  Jerry Berman has published widely on
the legal and legislative implications of computer security and
electronic communications privacy, and his expertise in networks and
the law is widely recognized.  He is heading EFF's efforts on the
national information infrastructure in the very thick of the
Clinton-Gore administration, and Mr Berman, as you might imagine, is a
very busy man these days, with a lot of digital irons in the virtual
fire.

       Mr. Kapor and Mr Berman will be taking part in our first panel
today, on the topic of EFF's current directions in national public
policy.  This panel will last from 1:45 to 3PM sharp and should be
starting about fifteen minutes after I knock it off and leave this
podium.   We will allow these well-qualified gentlemen to supply their
own panel moderation, and simply tell us whatever is on their minds.
And I rather imagine that given the circumstances, cryptography is
likely to loom large.  And, along with the other panels, if they want
to throw it open for questions from the floor, that's their decision.

       There will be a fifteen-minute break between each panel to
allow our brains to decompress.

        Our second panel today, beginning at 3:15,  will be on the
implications of cryptography for law enforcement and for industry, and
the very large and increasingly dangerous areas where police and
industry overlap in cyberspace.  Our participants will be Esther Dyson
and Mike Godwin.

       Esther Dyson is a prominent computer-industry journalist.
Since 1982, she has published a well-known and widely-read industry
newsletter called Release 1.0.  Her industry symposia are justly
famous, and she's also very well-known as an industry-guru in Central
and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.  Ms Dyson is very
knowledgeable, exceptionally well-informed, and always a healthy
distance ahead of her time.  When it comes to the computer industry,
Esther Dyson not only knows where the bodies are buried, she has a
chalk outline ready-and-waiting for the bodies that are still upright!
She's on the Board of EFF as well as the Santa Fe Institute, the
Global Business Network, the Women's Forum, and the Poynter Institute
for Media Studies.

       Mike Godwin is the legal services council for EFF.  He is a
journalist, writer, attorney, legal theorist, and legal adviser to the
electronically distressed.  He is a veteran public speaker on these
topics, who has conducted many seminars and taken part in many fora
all over the United States.  He is also a former Austinite, a graduate
of the UT School of Law, and a minor character in a William Gibson
novel, among his other unique distinctions.  Mike Godwin is not only
in EFF inside the beltway of Washington, but is on the board of the
local group, EFF-Austin.  Mike Godwin is a well-known, one might even
say beloved, character in the electronic community.  Mike Godwin is
especially beloved to those among us who have had machinery sucked
into the black hole of a federal search-and-seizure process.

       Our third panel today, beginning at 4:45,  will be the uniquely
appropriate Cypherpunk Panel.  Our three barricade-climbing,
torch-waving,  veteran manifesto-writers will be John Perry Barlow,
John Gilmore and Eric Hughes.

       Mr Eric Hughes is NOT a member of the EFF Board of Directors.
Mr Hughes is the moderator of the well-known, notorious even, Internet
cypherpunk mailing list.  He is a private citizen and programmer from
the Bay Area of California, who has a computer, has a modem, has
crypto-code and knows how to use it!  Mr Hughes is here today entirely
on his own, very considerable, initiative, and we of EFF-Austin are
proud to have him here to publicly declare anything and everything
that he cares to tell us about this important public issue.

       Mr John Gilmore *is* a member of the EFF Board.  He is a
twenty-year veteran programmer, a pioneer in Sun Microsystems and
Cygnus Support, a stalwart of the free software movement, and a
long-term electronic civil libertarian who is very bold and forthright
in his advocacy of privacy, and of private encryption systems.   Mr
Gilmore is, I must say, remarkable among UNIX and GNU programmers for
the elegance and clarity of his prose writings.  I believe that even
those who may disagree with Mr Gilmore about the complex and important
issues of cryptography, will be forced to admit that they actually
understand what Mr Gilmore is saying.  This alone makes him a
national treasure.  Furthermore, John Gilmore has never attended
college, and has never bought a suit.  When John Gilmore speaks his
mind in public, people should sit up straight!

       And our last introductee is the remarkable John Perry Barlow.
Journalist, poet, activist, techno-crank, manifesto-writer, WELLbeing,
long-time lyricist for the Grateful Dead, co-founder of Electronic
Frontier Foundation, member of the Wyoming Republican Party, a man who
at last count had at least ten personal phone numbers, including two
faxes, two cellulars and a beeper;  bon vivant, legend in his own
time, a man with whom superlatives fail, art critic, father of three,
contributing editor of MONDO 2000, a man and a brother that I am proud
to call truly *my kind of guy:* John Perry Barlow.

       So these are our panelists today, ladies and gentlemen:  a fine
group of public-spirited American citizens who, coincidentally, happen
to have a collective IQ high enough to boil platinum.   Let's give
them a round of applause.

       (((frenzied applause)))

       Thank you.  Ladies and gentlemen, EFF-Austin is not the EFF.
We are a local group with our own incorporation and our own unique
organizational challenges.  We are doing things on a local scale,
where the National EFF  cannot operate.  But we know them, and we
*like* them, and we are proud to have them here.  Furthermore, every
time some Austin company, such as Steve Jackson Games Incorporated, or
the currently unlucky Austin Codeworks, publishers of a program called
"Moby Crypto," find themselves in some strange kind of federal hot
water, we are not only proud to know the EFF, we are *glad* to know
them.  Glad, and *grateful!*   They have a lot to tell us today, and
they are going to tell us things they believe we really need to know.
And after these formal panels, this evening from 8 to 10, we are
going to indulge in a prolonged informal session of what we Austinites
are best at:  absorbing alcohol,  reminiscing about the Sixties, and
making what Mitch Kapor likes to call "valuable personal contacts."

       We of EFF-Austin are proud and happy to be making information
and opinion  on important topics and issues available to you, the
Austin public, at NO CHARGE!!

       Of course, it would help us a lot, if you bought some of the
unbelievably hip and with-it  T-shirts we made up for this gig, plus
the other odd and somewhat overpriced, frankly, memorabilia and
propaganda items that we of EFF-Austin sell, just like every other
not-for-profit organization in the world.  Please help yourself to
this useful and enlightening stuff, so that the group can make more
money and become even more ambitious than we already are.

       And on a final note, for those of you who are not from Austin,
I want to say to you as an Austinite and member of EFF-Austin, welcome
to our city.  Welcome to the Capital of Texas.  The River City.  The
City of the Violet Crown.  Silicon Hills.  Berkeley-on-the-Colorado.
The Birthplace of Cyberpunk.  And the Waterloo of the Chicago Computer
Fraud and Abuse Task Force.

       You are all very welcome here.

       So today,  let's all learn something, and let's all have some
fun.  Thanks a lot.



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