Thoughts on the proposal

[Phil Karn <karn@unix.ka9q.ampr.org>]

Some points to add, some of which I don't think have been made yet.

It is entirely possible that Clinton, if he understands anything at
all about this proposal, sincerely thinks that he's helping the cause
of personal privacy. Consider that his entire education on the
subject of cryptography probably consisted of a 5 minute briefing
that probably went something like this:

	The US government is making available, for widespread public use,
	encryption technology developed by the greatest cryptographers in the
	world - NSA's.  Civilian cryptographers are simply not capable of
	producing anything as good, so what does it matter if the keys are
	registered with the government? Users will still be better off than
	they are now, so what do they have to lose?

And I bet that this would sound perfectly reasonable to the average
man on the street, too.

Well...I'd say we know better. And we have a big educational job to
do.  We need to let the public know that civilian cryptography is
already quite good. Good enough that the communications industry
doesn't need any "help" in the form of new chips from the government
to secure its communications, thank you very much. And simple and
cheap enough that it would have already have been made widely
available in products such as digital cellular telephones if the
government hadn't considered it "too good" and done everything they
could behind the scenes to stop it.

Clinton needs to learn that if he *really* wants to help the cause of
civilian cryptography, he only needs to call off the goons over in
NSA.  We don't need their "help". We just want them to get the hell
out of our private conversations and our private lives.

Phil