Re: Australia, EU crypto ill news, crypto wars

[aba@dcs.exeter.ac.uk]

> > a) Lobbying - hopeless IMO, they aren't interested in listening, the
> >    politicos are just too easy to manipulate and the "masses" aren't
> >    clueful enough of what crypto means to understand the implications,
> >    or even notice.
> 
> The "masses" are not that clueless (remember the 80% against Clipper
> in a US poll a year ago). 

It depends how it is packaged to the voter, if it is even presented at
all (as you note below so much gets quitely swept through, and
presented fait-a-compli once they've already signed some euro deal).

The US at least makes a token of having public debate, I wouldn't be
suprised to see little to no coverage of this in the UK for instance.
If it was worded as 'government wants to force taps on all your
phones' as presumably the clipper vote was, then you might get a
reaction, but if it's worded as a way to keep tabs on all those evil
child pornagraphs who teem in the countless millions on the internet,
well it's not so eady to convince people.  Some folks still have a
mistaken belief that because that nice police man says that we need to
do this to protect our children then it is so.

Also note that Clipper wasn't completely quashed, Clinton elected to
use it for government contractors, and government official business
where crypto would be used, by presidential decree.  Not a very
democratic move, and still a ploy to get the thing accepted by
misspent government money in creating a market for the things, and
mandating it's use in defense contracting work for the government.

> The problem 'here' in the EU is the smartly construed distance
> between commons and rulers. We vote for members of a debate club
> (who are very generously paid out of tax money) lacking any power
> whatsoever. The EU decision on crypto-policy will emerge from closed
> chambers of the Commission, and in every member country the local
> politicians will announce that 'it has been decided by EU and there
> is nothing we can do about it, even if we would like to'.

Sure that's exactly the approach taken to ram these things down our
throats with out public debate.

> But this doesn't mean that national freedom-of-(crypto)speech
> campaigns will be useless.  Civil disobedience, still very common
> amongst European citizens faced with ridiculous EU regulations, will
> be more likely to thrive if the legitimacy of crypto regulations is
> publically questioned in a continuous mode.

Civil disobedience is a nice way to protest obvious nonsense, of
course, but doesn't help financial institutions who will be by law
required to use escrowed encryption with the AU govt holding the keys
(in the case of the AU example government current line).  Where's your
privacy then?  You must fight for it, whilst your very efforts are
illegal, and these ludicrous laws can then be selectively enforced
depending on the whims of some arbitrary power.

> A significant difference between (for example) Sweden and USA is the
> punishment scales. Suppose Sweden had an ITAR (which it
> hasn't). Almost everyone would laughingly export PGP and Wei's
> library anyway, because the remote possibility of prosecution
> (assuming similarities with the current situation in the US) would
> hardly feel like a threat. A conviction would result in a few 100$
> fine, maximum. 

Liveable, as you could view it as a 'freedom tax', but unjust.

> An *enforced* ban on crypto in Scandinavia is remote enough that I'm
> confident 'SuperStego for Windows' will be out in ver 7.3b by then.

Well there's several issues: should they be allowed to do this (no
way), and will they get away with it in the current level of crypto
awareness (probably IMO), and will it be an effective deterrant
(depends, the US one seems to keep US companies out of crypto, even
though it has probably aided rather than hindered PGPs popularity),
and is it enforceable (well ultimately no, due to good stego - your
'SuperStego for Windows' v 7.3b).

If you're confidence in Swedens resistance to big brotheresque crypto
regs is justified, well perhaps a bevy of political thought criminals
will come live in Sweden to escape their own repressive regimes.  Hows
the job market for unix hackers?

Adam
--
HAVE *YOU* EXPORTED RSA TODAY? --> http://dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/
--rsa--------------------------8<-------------------------------
#!/bin/perl -s-- -export-a-crypto-system-sig -RSA-3-lines-PERL
$m=unpack(H.$w,$m."\0"x$w),$_=`echo "16do$w 2+4Oi0$d*-^1[d2%Sa
2/d0<X+d*La1=z\U$n%0]SX$k"[$m*]\EszlXx++p|dc`,s/^.|\W//g,print
pack('H*',$_)while read(STDIN,$m,($w=2*$d-1+length($n)&~1)/2)
-------------------------------8<-------------------------------
TRY: rsa -k=3 -n=7537d365 < msg | rsa -d -k=4e243e33 -n=7537d365