Abstract
The article examines how politically sensitized designers of cryptographic systems utilize principles from the realm of mathematics and physics in order to safeguard the ontological underpinnings of a life-world that is increasingly being mediated and augmented by internet technologies. “The Structures of the Life-World” by Alfred Schutz and Thomas Luckmann will be used as an analytical framework, in order to differentiate between the experiential dimensions of a social world that is increasingly being mediated and augmented by networked technologies and the imperceptible technological infrastructure of the internet. From the perspective of crypto activists, the latter specifies the ontological conditions under which we interact with internet mediated aspects of the world and it restructures our situatedness in the world: On the one hand, this technical mediation augments our scope of action in the world. On the other hand, it allows the controllers of the technical infrastructure to manipulate our communication experience and it makes our utterances of life transparent to parties that are unbeknownst to us. As will be shown, politicized crypto-experts utilize mathematical principles to provide the world experience of the networked individual with ontological security and to inscribe specific social norms into the ontological layer of the digitalized world.
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Notes
- 1.
See the article “Prying Eyes Inside the NSA's War on Internet Security” published on Spiegel Online, available under the URL: https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/inside-the-nsa-s-war-on-internet-security-a-1010361.html (April 2017).
- 2.
The documents are available on WikiLeaks’ website under the URL: https://wikileaks.org/vault7/#Marble%20Framework (April 2017).
- 3.
This quote is part of a transcription of Schoens’ talk on “Let’s Encrypt” held on the Chaos Communication Congress 2014. The talk is available on the CCC’S website under the URL: https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3__6397_-_en_-_saal_6_-_201412301400_-_let_s_encrypt_-_seth_schoen#video&t=209 (April 2017).
- 4.
See Schneier’s blog post “Data is a Toxic Asset”, available online under the URL https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_toxic.html (April 2017).
- 5.
Take as a common example Amazon’s recommendation system that suggests specific items of interest according to a customer’s previous purchase decisions.
- 6.
The definition of Pervasive Monitoring is clarified in RFC 7258 of the IETF, available online under the URL https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7258 (April 2017).
- 7.
The cognitive effort necessary for the ego agens to appresent the immediacy and simultaneity of the communication partner differs from a Skype conference to a Voice-over-IP session to an E-Mail conversation. In the Skype conversation I experience the auditive and visual dimensions of the Other. The Voice-over-IP call lacks the visualization of the Other and in the case of an E-Mail conversation I only have the written language as a clue to the Other’s intentionality.
- 8.
Over the course of my field work the start-up’s focus shifted towards the deployment of financial products (Brackets) that are aimed at facilitating B2B Trade and Supply Chain Finance. For further information see https://www.skuchain.com/ (April 2017).
- 9.
Schneier’s article is available online under the URL: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/05/government-betrayed-internet-nsa-spying (April 2017).
- 10.
In his talk “It’s not a fax machine connect to a waffle iron”, held at the Re:publica 2013, the IT-expert and novelist Cory Doctorow illustrates the necessity to cryptographically safeguard our perception of reality against the manipulation by physically distant third parties by referring to smart hearing aids. He describes them as “[…] computers that we put into our bodies with the power to hear what we hear, to stop us hearing things selectively, to make us hear things that aren’t there, and even to tell other people what we’re hearing” (excerpt of Doctorows talk from minute 05:42 until 06:05, available online under the URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWqx_1tDyqE, August 2020). It is obvious that Doctorow uses smart hearing aids as a drastic example to illustrate our growing dependency on networked devices for ascertaining us with aspects of the world. This example also underlines the potentiality for the manipulation of our sensory perception of the world by physically distant third parties.
- 11.
This idea was formulated several times by Julian Assange amongst others in an interview conducted by Hans Ulrich Obrist, available on WikiLeaks’ website under the URL https://wikileaks.org/In-Conversation-with-Julian.html (April 2017).
- 12.
For further information visit the website of the Tor Project, available under the URL: https://www.torproject.org/ (April 2017).
- 13.
Bruce Schneier addressed the problem that mathematics itself does not reify into an event in the world and that “code has agency” in his blog post “The NSA Is Breaking Most Encryption on the Internet”, available under the URL https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/the_nsa_is_brea.html (April 2017).
- 14.
For an in depth discussion about the political implications of the Blockchain see Dan Swislows article “What the blockchain could mean for democracy in the digital age”, available online under the URL: https://www.demworks.org/what-blockchain-could-mean-democracy-digital-age (April 2017).
- 15.
Jefferson’s original quote goes as follows: “In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” This statement is part to the Kentucky Resolution from 1798.
- 16.
Linus Neumann, one of CCC’s spokespersons, made this statement at the “Open Debate on the Politics of Encryption”, a podium discussion held in Berlin in July 2016. An audio recording of the discussion is available under the URL: https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2016-07-20_Open-Debate-on-the-Politics-ofEncryption.mp3 (April 2017).
- 17.
This is an ideal-typical demarcation of the design and implementation process of cryptographic systems. As it turned out during my research, the boundaries between the areas of responsibility are fluent in practice.
- 18.
This credo is formulated on the IETF’s website, available under the URL https://www.ietf.org/tao.html (April 2017).
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Ruh, N. (2021). “The Universe Believes in Encryption”—Implementing Math into the Ontological Layer of the Digitally Augmented Life-World. In: Dreher, J. (eds) Mathesis universalis – Die aktuelle Relevanz der „Strukturen der Lebenswelt“. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-22329-8_19
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