Wiretapping chip: vid clips & sound bites

[szabo@techbook.com (Nick Szabo)]

I was on a Portland-area TV forum this evening and was able to raise 
the wiretap chip issue to a lay audience (in addition to being
in some ways a lay person myself on this issue, but quite concerned).
Here are some talking points and phrases I found helpful:

* Compared and contrasted a "wiretap chip", which gives government
agencies the keys to your private conversations, and a "privacy chip" 
where you keep the keys (come to think of it, I'm not sure that second
point is technically correct -- how would a truly private phone
handle the keys?)
* Compared giving government agencies crypto keys to giving the
IRS the keys to your house and filing cabinet.
* As examples I used lawyer/client, psychiatrist/patient, 
priest/confessor and political campaign work done over the phone.
* Showed New York Times front page story (Fri. 4/16) to the camera,
to demonstrate that this is important, not a fringe issue and that 
the wiretap chip is real.  Quoted Stephen Bryen of Secured 
Communications Technologies Inc., "I think the government is
creating a monster."
* Emphasized importance of learning about telephone and e-mail
technology, and how they can be made private with
open cryptography.  (As opposed to top-secret chip designs which
I called "closed cryptography").
* Stated that I was switching from AT&T to another provider in
protest of their selling phones containing wiretap chips.

I wanted to use a see-thru telephone as a prop to point at
computer chips inside the phone, but wasn't able to locate one
in time.

Some of this may sound corny and less accurate than a
technical presentation, but I needed to make the lay
audience at least mildly informed, sympathetic and perhaps even 
motivated to write their phone company or their Congresscritters 
within about the three minutes of air time.  Further suggestions for 
sound bites, vid clips etc. to use in a media campaign greatly 
appreciated.

Nick Szabo					szabo@techbook.com