My letter to the President, for all the good it'll do

[rclark@nyx.cs.du.edu (Robert W. F. Clark)]

Well, this and fifty cents will get you a cup of coffee, but
here's my letter to the Pres.

------

I oppose the Clipper chip vehemently.  As the President, or the
duly authorized representative of the President, you will understand
that I find the idea that you will monitor my communications
reprehensible and intolerable.

You have espoused a policy of covert surveillance of
American citizens of which Bush would be proud.  You, a protester
of the Vietnam War, who understands that the government can, and
should be opposed when it is wrong, should understand why privacy
is necessary to the people of any democracy, lest it cease to
be a democracy.  Nevertheless, you approved the Clipper Chip proposal,
which is the furthest step backward that even a politician could take.
Shame on you!  Even George Bush's father, Prescott Bush, who despised
and opposed Senator McCarthy's Communist witch-hunt, would loathe
such a retrogressive move!

We computer professionals, who supported your rise to power, feel
betrayed by your sudden reversal, by no means unique among your
sudden reversals.  By siding with those who would rob Americans
of those freedoms which are our inalienable right, you have betrayed
democracy and made a sham of the Bill of Rights.  

If, as a White House official suggested, criminalizing alternative,
secure encryption standards is an "option on the table," I am disgusted
by your betrayal.  You, who seemed proud to have protested an unjust
war, and should understand why protest, even anonymous protest, should
be an inalienable right, have no right even to consider this as an 
option.  

If you consider criminalizing privacy, and encryption, you have
signed over the soul of the nation to be monitored at will by the
NSA and CIA, organizations which you, at one time in your life, opposed.
Perhaps, like many Sixties rebels, you have been bought by the
government, and no longer care about the rights of the American people.
It would not be the only time this has occurred.

While I doubt that you, the President, shall read this, perhaps some
subordinate shall.  Perhaps, if the miraculous is possible, that 
subordinate shall deem this worthy of your consideration.  

While I am not used to pleading, I plead that you reconsider this
policy, which, if enacted, would doom privacy in the United States,
and turn this nation into the sort of nation that the Soviet Union
has finally decided not to be.

I beg that you consider, at least for a moment, the evil that you
may unleash.  You may be motivated by an understandable concern for
the protection of the American people from drug dealers and mobsters,
but it is not the mobsters you shall crush in supporting the Clipper
chip.  It is those eager, agile young minds who oppose the government
when it is wrong, and only wish to be able to have their voice,
without being monitored by the CIA and NSA in case that voice occasionally
is overly strident.

Thank you, Mr. President.  I hope that you have carefully studied
the holy Consitution of this nation, which you have sworn to uphold.
I fear for the consequences if you have not.

Robert W. F. Clark
440 S. Franklin St.
Bloomfield, IN 47424
Telephone # (812) 384-3465
email addresses:
clark@metal.psu.edu
rclark@nyx.cs.du.edu