right to speak language of choice (Re: DTI Policy Response)

[James Backhouse]

At the risk of taking this little deviation of cryptography too far...

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeffrey Goldberg <J.Goldberg@Cranfield.ac.uk>
To: ukcrypto <ukcrypto@maillist.ox.ac.uk>
Date: 30 April 1998 12:18
Subject: Re: right to speak language of choice (Re: DTI Policy Response)


>It is rare when discussion on this list (which I find very useful and
>interesting), turns up something that I can actually make a contribution
>to.

Same here mate!

>If the law wanted to make a distinctions between natural language (or
>psuedo-natural languages, like Esperanto) and encrypted material it could
>do so fairly easily on formal as opposed to behavioural/cultural grounds.
>If I decided to communicate with someone in Dyirbal (an almost dead
>language of northern Queensland) I could do so (well, actually I know
>only a couple of sentences, and those are not very useful anyway, but
>let's pretend)...

Actually governments have in the past been very keen on suppressing
languages that minorities can converse easily at the expense of the forces
of the state (suppression of Welsh, Gaelic etc)


Also, there is something very interesting about
>Dyirbal and this discussion which I will come back to.
>
>First of all, no matter how obscure or private the language is, it is not
>cryptography if we consider the art of encryption as replacing big secrets
>(messages) with little secrets (keys).  It would take a lot of message
>before the size of the messages approaches the size of the secret
>(knowledge of Dyirbal).  It would be difficult to get a linguist to give
>you a size estimate of knowledge of a language and it is obviously small
>enough to fit inside a brain (specially designed for the purpose).
>I think that this question about the size of the key compared to the
>size of the message is going to be the overriding distinction.
>
>Human languagues have a large number of abstract but identifiable
>characteristics, nouns, verbs, and adjectives for example (claims about
>Kwakutil notwithstandingd).  And there are plenty of other things that
>can be used to say that something is or isn't a natural language like
>thing.
>
>On Wed, 29 Apr 1998, James Backhouse wrote:
>
>> The origins of the now almost defunct Cockney dialect [...]

>I suspect, but don't know, that this particular account is a myth
>(similalry to many Eskimo words for 'snow', an Appelacian dialect similar
>to Elizibethian English, etc).  But whether the account is true or not
>doesn't really change the point.

When I get back to base I can supply a reference or two I am sure.

>> By contrast what eCommerce requires is formal, and hence protocol-driven
>> virtual interaction and what law enforcement is looking for is a formal
and
>> predictable way of decoding.

>Most linguists would argue that natural languages are formal systems, just
>very very complicated ones, whose rules are extremely difficult to
>articulate.  If fact, the formal linguist would typically argue that there
>is no alternative to thinking of natural languages as formal systems.
>There are strings that are in the language, strings that are not in the
>language, and the ability to determ that is encoded in a finite entity
>(a brain).  So, there is a finite decision procedure that among other
>things, determins whether a string is in a language or not.  Just
>because no one is able to specify the formal description doesn't
>mean there isn't one.  So formal language is is not the distinction
>to go on.

The syntax and grammar of a natural language are comparable in their
formality (being (mostly) specified in rules) with the formalism of a code.
The problem arises with the semantics.  The range of possibilities of what a
word (or other symbol) may mean in a human, informal setting can never be
compared to the poverty imposed by the narrow and predetermined semantics of
any formalism.


    But much turns on the purpose of the communication:-


Since eCommerce implies communication between contracting parties who are
distant physically and culturally from each other, and previously unknown to
each other,  the form of their communication must be, ipso facto, formal.
There is no basis for an informal exchange in some "secret" language which
is incomprehensible to LEA.


However underworld criminal groups do often hail from the same cultural and
social backgrounds, in fact they make a point of keeping things in the
family (Sicilian mafia, Neapolitan camorra, East End villains a la Krays
etc) in order ensure good interpretation and understanding, dare I say
trust - well up to a point.  In these circs cryptography has less relevance
precisely because communications do not have to formalised.

The assassinated Italian investigating judge Giovanni Falcone spoke on
several occasions of the utmost importance of understanding the language of
signs used by the mafia. But he was not referring to their written
communications - and I suspect that both syntax and semantics were
problematic.
...
>It is doubtful that these avoidence languages are actually used to
>maintain secrets, but instead are used as a very big display of avoidence
>behaviour.


I think this part takes us into the terms of reference of other lists..
>