Re: ON OFF-TOPIC [NOISE]

[Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>]

At 10:16 PM 9/7/95 -0400, Phill wrote:
>>Nope.  but the patriots & the cyPHerpunks share a common goal, and belief 
>>that it is none of the government's business what we think or want to 
>>share with our computers.
>Poor you, the only major political party to come out with a pro crypto
statement 
>is a socialist party.

But - wait!  Of course you're not a patriot - You're a foreigner!  Oh, no! :-)

>The problem is currently with the right wing, right wing democrats such as 
>Clinton and practically all the Republicans. 

As you later point out, it's really an authoritarian/libertarian issue,
(though it's at least nice to hear somebody else who realizes Clinton's
no liberal :-); it affects both economic control/freedom issues
and freedom of speech issues as well.  A lot of the Republicans,
mainly the newly elected ones, are less anti-crypto, partly because
they're pro-business, and sometimes pro-free-speech, but also because
they're not as closely tied in to the authoritarian power structure the
way Bush and Clinton have been.

>If you want a debate on how to convince the authoritarians then perhaps you
will 
>get some interest. 
That'll be tough.  The military and police can already get good crypto, 
as can other gov't agencies that want to use it to increase their power.  
Crypto can also be really effective for National ID cards, but I'd really rather
not encourage them to think along those lines at all, even using Chaum
techniques.
You can use it to hide campaign contributions and bribes, but of course they
probably don't want to admit that in public.  If everyone in the government
were to use key-escrowed phones, folks like Ollie North would probably realize
they had to be careful with their communications, but it would at least let
gentlemen read each others' mail...

Is there something authoritarians want, that we don't mind them having,
for which crypto would be an enabling technology?  Some of them _might_
be interested in having better encryption for TV channels so that kids
can't watch a NotForKids channel (though many of them might rather ban
it outright) or so they can easily control whether their kids get to
watch MTV even though the V-Chip doesn't have a NoisyKidsMusic bit.
Perhaps they'd enjoy having reputation systems available, so they can
easily filter out politically incorrect material, or do a thumbs-down
on things they disapprove of, or let the Baptists and Catholics and
Anti-Baptists all have their own convenient ratings.
#---
#                                Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts@ix.netcom.com
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