*Bill: The NSA is keeping track of me? Becky: All the time -- you, Dorothy Gail, Eric and Derek -- all the important cypherpunks. You're on their shit list because you develop cryptography they can't track. They monitor everything you do or say
*.
Sounds like hardcore geek speak, but it's the dialogue from a new porno movie, called Cryptic Seduction.
There are more connections between sex and data protection than one might imagine, said filmmaker Randy French.
"Why porno and cypherpunks? No particular reason, other than I wanted to do an adult film and I am a cypherpunk," said French, who uses a pseudonym. "Of course, free speech is the flip side of the privacy coin. Cypherpunks support both issues."
Cypherpunks are a loosely organized group of privacy advocates, libertarian stalwarts, and encryption developers made famous for supporting strong code to safeguard one's personal data on the Net.
"There's a strong libertarian streak among the cypherpunk movement," said Mike Godwin, staff counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "It's not surprising they are very supportive of people's right to make pornography. There are a lot of convergences."
The movie's protagonist is a fictitious cypherpunk named Bill Dylan played by Mike Horner, a 21-year veteran of the porn industry who is also the movie's director.
The bad guys are the feds -- in this case, the National Security Agency, or NSA -- who are constantly spying on Dylan and his fellow cypherpunks.
As the story goes, Dylan has invented a powerful quantum computing chip nicknamed Desdaemona.
"There are computer scientists who believe that a quantum computer could make public key encryption obsolete, because it would allow for the almost instantaneous factoring of large numbers," French explained.
The NSA wants to get the chip without causing a public stir. So they send Jo -- a female operative played by porno actress TJ Hart -- to seduce the cypherpunks.
Cryptic Seduction is one computer-room scene away from completion, according to Horner. So far, it has cost $30,000 to make and taken three full days of shooting.
The project had the financial backing of cypherpunk investors, according to French, who says he has been an active cypherpunk for five years and has written for Wired and Mondo 2000.
The film includes porno staples like girl-on-girl love scenes, oral and anal sex, and sex clubs. It also features cameo appearances and production assistance from half a dozen real-life cypherpunks. Insider references abound: Several characters in the movie wear black hats, which French said refers to the broad-brimmed black hats worn by many Bay Area cypherpunks.
In one club scene, a lap dancer played by porn actress Rosy Rocket recognizes Dylan at a club. She tells him she's going to "suck his secret key out of him."
The secret key is a reference to public key cryptography, a hot cypherpunk issue. The US government wants a copy of a code's key so that law enforcement can recover coded information. Cypherpunks want to keep their data private.
The characters also mention "Darned Good Privacy" software, a spoof of Phil Zimmermann's free "Pretty Good Privacy" encryption software that lets two people send email with high security. French said he's spoken with Zimmermann, who was amused by the movie's concept. But Zimmermann did not return phone calls for this article.
The name "Desdaemona" is another inside joke about DES, or Digital Encryption Standard (DES), the federal standard software algorithm. A message encoded with DES was decoded in less than three days by the EFF last July. Cypherpunks call for stronger encryption than DES. Desdaemona also includes the word "daemon," a UNIX program that executes in the background.
French said that certain characters are based on real life cypherpunks, including Eric and Derek, who are based on a mixture of cypherpunks co-founder Eric Hughes and Ian Goldberg, chief scientist and head cypherpunk at Zero Knowledge Systems, a Canadian-based software company.
Another real cypherpunk has a bit part as a Japanese businessman who shoos away a lapdancer in favor of surfing the Web on his laptop in a club. "He has a Ricochet wireless modem," said French. "While the sex was going on he was actually online."
Some cypherpunks say that Randy French's alter ego is Sandy Sandfort, a cypherpunk member. French also says that the real Hughes makes a cameo appearance in a club scene at the WWW (World Wide Women) club. Neither Hughes nor Sandfort would comment for this article.
Horner hopes the movie will air on an outlet like the adult Spice Channel, his former employer.
And of course, the film will soon have its own Web site at www.crypticseduction.com, French said.
"I think the idea of a cypherpunk porn movie is amusing, but I haven't seen the movie (or any of the filming)," wrote John Gilmore, also a cypherpunks founder and cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in an email. "It's got to be better (for geeks) than the plot of the average porn movie!"
