Re: "Stopping Crime" Necessarily Means Invasiveness

["Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>]

At 10:20 AM +0100 10/18/96, Bert-Jaap Koops wrote:
>"Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net> wrote:
>> The recent talk about "catching criminals" misses this point, that
>> governments typically use surveillance powers to control citizens. (Note: I
>> would think Dutch residents should be especially sensitive to this concern,
>> given what happened to them in WW II, when the arriving Nazis used
>> telephone records to locate Jews for extermination. Until recently, Holland
>> had a tendency to carefully think about such issues---I believe phone calls
>> were billed in such a way as to not keep such records, for example).
>
>I suppose this remark is targeted at me and Eric.

And David Chaum, Digicash, etc. And not just Holland, but Europe as well.
And America. The point being that people should carefully consider the uses
to which technology is put. (I agree that one should not "hold back" on
technical/scientific discoveries out of unreasonable fear; my comments were
mainly triggered by your own comments about the "need to catch criminals.")

...
>
>So much for politics. Can we get back to crypto?
>

This "I've said what I want to say and now I want you to shut up" rejoinder
is all too common here on this list. If you only want to talk crypto, go
ahead. But  others of us will discuss what we think is important.

As it happens, I think any of the variants of "government access to keys"
(GAK, key escrow, key recovery, binding cryptography, traceable e-cash,
etc.) are worthy topics of discussion. Pure crypto, absent any
sociopolitical implications, is probably best discussed in
sci.crypt.research, the Crypto and EuroCrypt Conferences, networks of
preprint distribution, and suchlike.

--Tim May



"The government announcement is disastrous," said Jim Bidzos,.."We warned IBM
that the National Security Agency would try to twist their technology."
[NYT, 1996-10-02]
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."