Re: Andy Grove on Clipper

[mpd@netcom.com (Mike Duvos)]

Tim writes:

 > With egg all over their face on Clipper, I see the
 > Administration now launching a new campaign, a campaign
 > being led by Donn Parker, Dorothy Denning, Andy Grove, and
 > others. In this campaign, the second approach mentioned
 > above will be dominant: a focus on pedophiles who "encrypt
 > their list of victims," a focus on "terrorists who form
 > virtual networks around the world," and a focus on "money
 > launderers who use crypto anarchy to spread their poison."

This is beginning already.  I haven't seen anything in the
mainstream press lately on Cyberspace in which the word
"pedophile" wasn't mentioned prominently.  The enemy learned long
ago that you can get the public up in arms about almost anything,
as long as you package it as either a public safety or child
protection issue.

I don't think we have very much time left to save our precious
encryption rights from Big Brother.  Revoking rights is like frog
boiling.  As long as it is done slowly enough, it goes relatively
unnoticed.

Bill Clinton was talking yesterday about how no one complains any
more about tight airport security and accepts it as a fact of
life.  Contrast this with the screams of outrage from the first
few people forced to walk through metal detectors and have their
baggage searched.

Remember when civil forfeiture started?  First only profits from
illegal activities were seized.  They quickly moved to seizing
all of a suspects assets.  Now cops can stop you on the road,
empty your pockets, and take your money using only the
justification that possession of more than a certain amount is
evidence of wrongdoing.

Look at the engineering of public attitudes on marijuana,
underage erotica, and even smoking that have taken place over the
last decade.

Pretty soon the public will accept the notion that they must give
up all their personal privacy in order to protect us from
terrorists, drug dealers, and people with rarified sexual
interests.  Only incompetent opposing points of view on this
issue are ever presented by the mainstream media.  Give these
people another year or two, and they will be telling us that mere
possession of PGP abuses children in some ficticious and
vicarious manner.

Because the government is so powerful, and we are not, we have to
avoid the pitfall of harping frivilous issues in a last desperate
attempt to thwart the federal agenda.  Attacks on Denning's
character, the Clipper algorithm, and the LEAF field, while
interesting, do nothing to help our cause.  What will we do when
the government presents us with an escrowed, publicly reviewed,
unbreakable strong encryption algorithm which is mandatory?  We
need to concentrate on the basic issues here and state them
clearly many times in language the public can understand.

The public slap in the face our agenda received the other day on
the crypto export issue should be proof enough that our enemies
will accept nothing less than the total surrender of our right to
personal privacy.  It's time to stop being nice.  When you go after 
the King, you shoot to kill.

-- 
     Mike Duvos         $    PGP 2.6 Public Key available     $
     mpd@netcom.com     $    via Finger.                      $