(fwd) Big Brother vs. Cypherpunks

[apteryx@super.zippo.com (Mark Heaney)]

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On Mon, 07 Oct 1996 17:13:11 -0400, John Young <jya@pipeline.com> wrote
>   Time, October 14, 1996, p. 78.
>
>   The Netly News
>
>   Joshua Quittner
>
>   Big Brother vs. Cypherpunks

[snip]

>  Are they right? It's hard to know whom to believe in this
>   cloak-and-dagger debate. Civil libertarians tend to gloss
>   over the fact that the world is full of bad people with
>   crimes to hide. The software industry -- which makes 48%
>   of its profit overseas -- is clearly less concerned with
>   privacy than with losing foreign sales. And it may be no
>   accident that the Administration chose to start making
>   concessions the same week an influential software CEO --
>   Netscape's Jim Barksdale -- excoriated Clinton's
>   cryptopolicy and endorsed Bob Dole.

Oh my, you mean diffferent sides of a controverial topic are saying
different things? What's a po reporter to do? 

>   The issue is too complex -- and too important -- for
>   political gamesmanship. It will never get sorted out
>   until somebody starts playing it straight.

Translation: I'm a lazy journalist who considers any controversy that
requires more than just asking the two sides about it as too complicated to
understand, and my editor wants me to dumb everything down anyway.

I guess it is hard to turn a large number of mathematical, technical, legal
and philosophical issues into no more than 3-syllable words, 15 word
sentences, 5 line paragraphs filling 1 column of a magazine. 

Maybe this reporter should have viewed the article on lattice crypto in The
Economist a couple of months back It's not impossible to explain the basic
issues at stake if you are willing to do some research and not insult the
intelligence of your audience. 

Of course, Time would be unlikely to print such an article that precludes
the semi-literate from understanding it. Besides which, I'm sure that there
is something *important* happening to Brad Pitt or Julia Roberts that needs
to be covered first.

Mark

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Mark Heaney    finger snipe@starburst.cbl.cees.edu for public key
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