The Future of Cyber Space Hangs in the Balance -- Can a New Cryptography Save Us?

Life in cyberspace shapes up as a paradise for the powers that be, blanketing us the people with invasive surveillance, administered through global connectivity. Our movements in public are intimately recorded, our actions at home are IoT monitored; digital money is designed to expose every financial move, and our encrypted messages, are spotted and compromised. Any grass root movement to rise against these oppressive powers will be detected right away before it has a chance to gain momentum and enjoy a reasonable chance of success. The price of the great convenience we enjoy in cyberspace is total exposure to the class that offers us this convenience. Against this grim outlook there rises the specter of perfect encryption, allowing two or more arbitrary residents of cyberspace to communicate without revealing neither the contents of their communication, nor the fact that communication took place. This freedom to stealthily organize serves as a counter measure to the specter of living in a big global fishbowl -- naked before the powers that be. Such powerful encryption is thus the call of the hour. The community of cryptographers is herewith summoned to the flag of liberty and democracy. A candidate for perfect cryptography: pattern-devoid cryptography is presented.

What is wrong with the prevailing cryptography?

Cryptography today is managed by governments. Government certifies ciphers, uses ciphers, and makes the rest of us use them. The best example is the global initiative by the US National Institute of Science and Technology, NIST: they call for the public to propose candidates for the new generation of ciphers (post quantum ciphers) and then they invite public comments and end up certifying choice candidates.

These recommended and certified ciphers are not proven to be effective for their purpose. Their merit is in the fact that nobody published a way to crack them. Now let's go back to the issue of government and cryptography. All governments believe they act for the good of the public. In democracies government believes its action represents the will of the people, and in authoritarian regimes, government believe it educates the population, but both believe they are good for the governed.

Also, all governments are on guard towards opposing calls. Since government is an agency of the good then anti government is an agency for the bad, and bad has to be monitored, surveyed, put under control. It is universal. Government use their power to monitor the population. They argue that since they represent the good, they will not abuse their surveillance advantage, they will only apply it to oppose the bad.

This was always the case, but today in cyber space, our exposure to the powers that be is nearly complete. Every move we make leaves digital footprints. So while in a proper democracy we enjoy freedom of speech, if the government can spot any dissenting speech early enough, it has good means to suppress it.

To that end governments vie for misleading ciphers which are regarded as unbreakable, but in fact the government can break them. The ideal state for the US National Security Agency and it international counterparts is when they manage to convince the public to use a cipher regarded as secure, while in fact, stealthily compromise it. Accordingly, when the government asserts that this cipher, or the other, are certifiably secure, this assertion must be taken as likely misleading. It is not because those agencies are run by evil people, it is their nature, their goal, their raison d'etra, to get us to use a cipher we rely on to hide our secrets in, while the government secretly reads it.

It is therefore that democracy, and freedom are not well in cyber space.

To change that we need perfect encryption -- where the security of ciphers is not a declared government promise, but a well structured mathematical proof which no dictator can order void.

Come to think about it, we have such cryptography. And it is more than hundred years old. In 1917 Gilbert S. Vernam filed a now famous patent which later on Claude Shannon proved it to enjoy the stamp of mathematical proof for secrecy. It was not practical at the time, and the Vernam cipher has been pushed aside. Alas, today, more than one hundred years later, the descendants of the old Vernam cipher are delivering on its promise -- unbreakable cryptography, not by government assurance, but by the rigor of mathematical proof. It goes by the name Trans-Vernam cryptography, or more descriptive: Pattern Devoid Cryptography.

Pattern Devoid cryptography is nascent. It is featured in a few dozen patented ciphers, and it has been published in a new peer-reviewed book. High security shops use it in stealth, but the powers that be are not welcoming the specter of people talking and government is not in the know.

I try to summon fellow cryptographers to pitch in, and develop pattern-devoid cryptography into an efficient convenient way for people to talk without having to rely on the government telling them that their communications are private. Let privacy be guaranteed by the immutable principles of mathematics. Not surprisingly the cryptographic establishment is not enthusiastic about this prospect for people's privacy, liberty and democracy. I have penned a technical description of pattern-devoid cryptography, concluding with the call to end the prevailing theologian cryptography where users show faith in the high priests of the profession, and instead let's shift to math-proven secrecy. Math which everyone can understand. This article by contrast to my former articles has been rejected by the editors of the Pre-Print website of the International Association of Cryptologic Research: Joppe W. Bos, Sofía Celi and Matthias J. Kannwischer. It looks that pattern-devoid cryptography has a long arduous way ahead, but the cause of privacy, liberty and democracy are worth the effort.