Clipper Chip report on 700 Club today (Wednesday)

[karn@qualcomm.com (Phil Karn)]

Thanks to the heads-up note here, I caught the whole thing on tape
when it repeated here on the West Coast at 10pm PDT. (I see there are
some advantages to living out here!)

If I hadn't seen the show with my own eyes, I never would have
believed it. The Religious Right, so ready to mind everyone else's
personal business and to reshape the government in its own image,
opposes something that would make it easier for the government to
control the private lives of its citizens. This cryptography stuff
sure makes some strange bedfellows. Wow.

Of course, the Religious Right is at odds with the current government,
what with talk of using the federal racketeering laws against
anti-abortion demonstrators.  So perhaps they can be forgiven for
their current anti-government stance.  Their tune might well change if
they ever succeed in overturning Roe V Wade. Imagine their glee
turning to horror when they discover that those satanic pro-choice
people are using encryption to coordinate *their* protests and perhaps
even to coordinate travel by women seeking abortions to places where
it is still legal. :-)

And there's supreme irony in the right to encryption and the right to
abortion both being founded in the same basic concept: personal
privacy.  It all depends on whose ox is being gored, I guess.


Phil