Racism on the Internet The internet can be regarded as a mirror of the variety of interests, attitudes and needs of human kind. Propaganda and disinformation in that way have to be part of it, whether they struggle for something good or evil. But the classifications do no longer function. During the last years the internet opened up a new source for racism as it can be difficult to find the person who gave a certain message into the net. The anarchy of the internet provides racists with a lot of possibilities to reach people which they do not possess in other media, for legal and other reasons. In the 1980s racist groups used mailboxes to communicate on an international level; the first ones to do so were supposedly the Ku Klux Klan and mailboxes like the Aryan Nations Liberty Net. In the meantime those mailboxes can be found in the internet. In 1997 about 600 extreme right websites were in the net, the number is growing, most of them coming from the USA. The shocking element is not the number of racist pages, because still it is a very small number compared to the variety of millions of pages one can find in this media, it is the evidence of intentional disinformation, the language and the hatred that makes it dangerous. A complete network of anti-racist organizations, including a high number of websites are fighting against racism. For example: http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/text/x32/xr3257.html http://www.aranet.org/ http://www.freespeech.org/waronracism/files/allies.htm http://www.nsdapmuseum.com http://www.globalissues.org/HumanRights/Racism.asp

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Timeline 1970-2000 AD 1971 IBM's work on the Lucifer cipher and the work of the NSA lead to the U.S. Data Encryption Standard (= DES) 1976 Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman publish their book New Directions in Cryptography, playing with the idea of public key cryptography 1977/78 the RSA algorithm is developed by Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard M. Adleman and is published 1984 Congress passes Comprehensive Crime Control Act - The Hacker Quarterly is founded 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is passed in the USA - Electronic Communications Privacy Act 1987 Chicago prosecutors found Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force 1988 U.S. Secret Service covertly videotapes a hacker convention 1989 NuPrometheus League distributes Apple Computer software 1990 - IDEA, using a 128-bit key, is supposed to replace DES - Charles H. Bennett and Gilles Brassard publish their work on Quantum Cryptography - Martin Luther King Day Crash strikes AT&T long-distance network nationwide 1991 PGP (= Pretty Good Privacy) is released as freeware on the Internet, soon becoming worldwide state of the art; its creator is Phil Zimmermann - one of the first conferences for Computers, Freedom and Privacy takes place in San Francisco - AT&T phone crash; New York City and various airports get affected 1993 the U.S. government announces to introduce the Clipper Chip, an idea that provokes many political discussions during the following years 1994 Ron Rivest releases another algorithm, the RC5, on the Internet - the blowfish encryption algorithm, a 64-bit block cipher with a key-length up to 448 bits, is designed by Bruce Schneier 1990s work on quantum computer and quantum cryptography - work on biometrics for authentication (finger prints, the iris, smells, etc.) 1996 France liberates its cryptography law: one now can use cryptography if registered - OECD issues Cryptography Policy Guidelines; a paper calling for encryption exports-standards and unrestricted access to encryption products 1997 April European Commission issues Electronic Commerce Initiative, in favor of strong encryption 1997 June PGP 5.0 Freeware widely available for non-commercial use 1997 June 56-bit DES code cracked by a network of 14,000 computers 1997 August U.S. judge assesses encryption export regulations as violation of the First Amendment 1998 February foundation of Americans for Computer Privacy, a broad coalition in opposition to the U.S. cryptography policy 1998 March PGP announces plans to sell encryption products outside the USA 1998 April NSA issues a report about the risks of key recovery systems 1998 July DES code cracked in 56 hours by researchers in Silicon Valley 1998 October Finnish government agrees to unrestricted export of strong encryption 1999 January RSA Data Security, establishes worldwide distribution of encryption product outside the USA - National Institute of Standards and Technologies announces that 56-bit DES is not safe compared to Triple DES - 56-bit DES code is cracked in 22 hours and 15 minutes 1999 May 27 United Kingdom speaks out against key recovery 1999 Sept: the USA announce to stop the restriction of cryptography-exports 2000 as the German government wants to elaborate a cryptography-law, different organizations start a campaign against that law - computer hackers do no longer only visit websites and change little details there but cause breakdowns of entire systems, producing big economic losses for further information about the history of cryptography see: http://www.clark.net/pub/cme/html/timeline.html http://www.math.nmsu.edu/~crypto/Timeline.html http://fly.hiwaay.net/~paul/cryptology/history.html http://www.achiever.com/freehmpg/cryptology/hocryp.html http://all.net/books/ip/Chap2-1.html http://cryptome.org/ukpk-alt.htm http://www.iwm.org.uk/online/enigma/eni-intro.htm http://www.achiever.com/freehmpg/cryptology/cryptofr.html http://www.cdt.org/crypto/milestones.shtml for information about hacker's history see: http://www.farcaster.com/sterling/chronology.htm:

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Federal Networking Council Being an organization established in the name of the US government, the Federal Networking Council (FNC) acts as a forum for networking collaborations among Federal agencies to meet their research, education, and operational mission goals and to bridge the gap between the advanced networking technologies being developed by research FNC agencies and the ultimate acquisition of mature version of these technologies from the commercial sector. Its members are representatives of agencies as the National Security Agency, the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, e.g. http://www.fnc.gov

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Internet Society Founded in 1992, the Internet Society is an umbrella organization of several mostly self-organized organizations dedicated to address the social, political, and technical issues, which arise as a result of the evolution and the growth of the Net. Its most important subsidiary organizations are the Internet Architecture Board, the Internet Engineering Steering Group, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Research Task Force, and the Internet Societal Task Force. Its members comprise companies, government agencies, foundations, corporations and individuals. The Internet Society is governed by elected trustees. http://www.isoc.org http://www.isoc.org/

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