Re: Senate panel nixes ProCODE II, approves McCain-Kerrey bill

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

At 09:13 PM 6/19/97 -0400, frissell@panix.com wrote:
>Anyone mentally retarded enough to expect a congresscritter to 
>protect one's rights deserves everything they get.  
>"Advocacy groups" could have better spent their time litigating crypto 
>and encouraging the use of strong crypto by themselves and their supporters.

While Duncan's mostly right about CONgresscritters, 
there's still a place for lobbying, as well as for litigation and coding.

The EFF and other lobbying groups have bought us about 5 years,
stalling bills like S.266 which would have banned most crypto,
though they've also let through some things like Digital Telephony
which aren't effectively implemented yet.  Without the pro-freedom
lobby groups, the anti-privacy groups have Freeh rein on the Hill,
and can get away with labelling any privacy technology as such
commie-child-porn-narcoterrorist-anti-motherhood-five-six-seven-horsemen EVIL
that the average Congresscritter (who doesn't really care, and knows it)
knows it's not safe to not to vote against it.  Of course, there are
even scarier Congresscritters (the ones who really _mean_well_),
but even the heavily-compromising groups that get funded by big corporations
to say things the corporations can't always say themselves
have helped.

Technology growth wins, gridlock is good, and delays in Congress are your
friend.
The 5 years they've bought us have been critical, letting us deploy
more technology, and understand its limits better, as Moore's law
has brought PCs into almost everyone's budget range, the Web has brought
networking into 30 million Americans' homes (and WebTV and the like
will reach even more couch potatoes), and the <&*&!#%> patents are running
out.
That Pentium 133 that you can get for the price of a fancy TV
looks a lot like the Cray 1 without the air conditioner, runs faster 
than an IBM 370, and the 28.8 modem can carry almost as much data
on your phone line as the expensive leased lines that the companies
who used IBM 370s a decade ago connected them together with.


#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
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