Re: Questions for Magaziner?

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

Okay, so the short precis on Magaziner's answer to my question about
encryption controls, foriegn or domestic, is he's agin it.

He says that controlling foriegn encryption is impossible, and controlling
domestic encryption is, at the very least, unconstitutional.

He says that the reason the administration's encryption policy is so
convoluted is that the law enforcement and the "economic" encryption camps,
anti, and pro, evidently, is that the two sides are at loggerheads.
Magaziner mirrored Rivest's offer to tax encryption products to pay for
increased law enforcement technology support, but, hey, he's a liberal
democrat, he's supposed to tax us to death without thinking about the
economic, and, of course privacy consequences of raising the price of
encryption.

So, all in all, he got a round of foot-stomping applause from this bunch on
his pro-encryption stance, because, evidently, being a payments technology
forum, he was preaching to the choir. Something I found out when I was
doing my own speech yesterday. I should realize that anyone building a
payment system knows that digital commerce is financial cryptography, after
all. :-)

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'