"Gentlemen do not read each other's mail"

["Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>]

Phill refers to the man who said "Gentlemen do not read each other's
mail", (Henry L. Stimson) as a twit.

I highly disagree. In some ways I regard him as our patron saint
(although the man was actually far from saintly and later as a member
of the Roosevelt cabinet adopted an opposite policy of aggressive
signals intelligence.)

Why is he our patron saint? He was a government official coming out
against invasion of privacy. Isn't that what we are all after, in the
end? The reason we deploy cryptography is to assure privacy for
all. We often refer to those who listen in on conversations
(regardless of who they are) as, in some sense, our
opposition. Therefore, is not Stimson's remark in closing down
Yardley's "Black Chamber" to be praised rather than attacked?

Perry