Question EFF yielding of crypto authority to NIST

[jkreznar@ininx.com (John E. Kreznar)]

> Below is the text of the comments that EFF filed with NIST today.

> ...

>         When the Clinton Administration announced the Clipper Chip, it
> assured the public that this would be a purely voluntary system.  We must
> have legal guarantees that Clipper is not the first step toward prohibition
> against un-escrowed encryption.  Yet the Administration has not offered any
> such guarantees, either in the form of proposed legislation or even agency
> rules.

> ...

Actually, they have issued such legal guarantees.  They're in the form of the
administration's vow to uphold the US Constitution.  That document's 9th and
10th amendments preclude US Government denial or disparagement of the people's
right to use cryptography (and a whole lot of others).  The fact that these
legal guarantees are being ignored simply illustrates that their tyranny is
unbridled.

By engaging NIST on this subject, the EFF is implicitly yielding to them
authority which is not theirs to begin with.

	John E. Kreznar		| Relations among people to be by
	jkreznar@ininx.com	| mutual consent, or not at all.