Re: Sen. Patrick Leahy's PGP key now avail.

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

At 10:23 PM 5/2/96 -0400, perry@piermont.com wrote:
>Timothy C. May writes:
>> Why does anyone need his public key to communicate with Senator Leahy? If
>> it's for sender-anonymity, this does not do it, though other tools
>> (remailers) do.   Unless the information is "secret," why bother?
>
>I would answer Tim, but I suspect that he would ignore something I
>might say. I will therefore quote Philip Zimmermann.
>   Perhaps you think your E-mail is legitimate enough that encryption is
>   unwarranted.  If you really are a law-abiding citizen with nothing to
>   hide, then why don't you always send your paper mail on postcards? 
>   Why not submit to drug testing on demand?  Why require a warrant for
>   police searches of your house?  Are you trying to hide something? 
.....
>Never thought I would see the day where Tim stopped being a
>Cypherpunk. Everyone mark your calendars.

One of the most important parts of any security analysis is the
threat models.  In this case, we're talking about sending email
_to_the_government_.

There may be something you want to tell the Senator or his staff that 
you want kept private from the public or from rest of the government,
and Tim's phrase "Unless the information is 'secret'" seems to cover that.
Maybe you want to say "My company lost $X to competitor Y"; that's private.
Maybe you want to say "The FBI is reading your email, y'know..."
Maybe you want to attach a $20 MarkTwain DigiCash campaign contribution.

But usually, telling the government something is fairly similar to
publishing it, in terms of expectation of privacy, even in a republic.
The tradeoff is between using PGP to make a point, and getting the staff
to read it.  Typically, Congressional Staffs are Your Friends, at least
more directly than the Congresscritters themselves.  Lobby _them_;
making their job easier is a good start.

Maybe the right thing to do is include the digicash, encrypt the message, 
and attach a note indicating that the enclosed digicash is for the staff
member who decrypts the note and gives it to the Senator :-)

#					Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215
begin 777 goodtimes
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