Re: Questions for Magaziner?

[Alan Olsen <alan@clueserver.org>]

On Fri, 18 Sep 1998, Tim May wrote:

> (I'm leaving the damned multiple lists cc:ed on this, as I have no idea
> where this thread came from. For those of you who send me notes saying I am
> not allowed to post on your list, plonk.)

I usually leave most of the cc:s due to not knowing who is reading what
anymore.  (Gateways being as they are...)

> >"Would you use escrowed cryptography for your private communications?  Who
> >would you trust to hold those keys?"
> 
> Well, I believe that even asking these sorts of questions (and possibly
> getting answers from government) plays into the hands of the GAKkers.

Depends.  With the right questions (assuming you get honest (Ha!) answers)
you can make them look like control freaks, hypocrites, and/or worse.

Hitting them with the unexpected can generate soundbites that can be used
for the cause.

Besides...  If you don't challenge them in public, the public tends to get
the impression that no one opposes this KRAP.

> After all, suppose they give pretty good answers? What if, for example,
> they propose a committee consisting of the entire Supreme Court, the
> Director of the Sierra Club, and so on, and say that a _unanimous_ vote is
> required to gain access to a key?

I would respond that they were lying.  I would also ask them if it was
going to be like the current wiretap authorization commissions that just
rubber stamp requests.

> Does this at all change the fundamental unconstitutionality of telling me
> that I will face imprisonment if I speak or write in a manner which is not
> part of their "escrow" arrangement? If I keep a diary without depositing an
> escrowed key with this noble, careful, thoughtful committee of wise persons?

Of course not.  And questions of constitutionality need to be asked of
them directly to their faces.  Without that direct confronation, they will
do whatever they damn well please.  (Not as if they don't now...)

> Of course not. My speech, my writing, my private codes, my whisperings, my
> phone conversations...all of these...are not subject to govenmwental
> approval. "Congress shall make no law..."

Encrypt! Encrypt! OK!

> Doesn't say that Congress or the courts of the President get to declare
> illegal certain modes of speaking. (*)
> 
> (* Please, I hope no one brings up "loud speech," "shouting fire," "obscene
> speech," "seditious speech," "slanderous speech," etc. This is well-trod
> ground, but clearly all of these apparent limits on speech, whether one
> agrees with them or not, have nothing to do with an overbroad requirement
> that speech only be in certain languages, that letters only be written on
> carbon paper with a copy filed with the government, and so on. The
> restrictions on _some_ kinds of speech are not a license to license speech,
> as it were, or to require escrow of papers, letters, diaries, and phone
> conversations and such.)

I am willing to argue that most of those restrictions are against what the
founding fathers meant when they wrote the document.  But currently we
live in a land where "consensus doublethink" is the nature of the law.

> My point about Alan's (and others') points is that if we get engaged in
> this kind of debate about how key escrow might work, we shift the debate
> from where it ought to be to where they _want_ it to be, namely, to issues
> of practicality.

What needs to be pointed out is that it CANNOT work.  By asking them if
they would use it, you point out that the system is so untrustworthy that
they themselves would not even use it.  (And if you say they would, you
just start laughing.)

> My view is that my writings are mine. They can try to get them with a
> search warrant or a court order, but they'd better not threaten me with
> imprisonment if I choose to write in some language they can't read. And
> that's all crypto really is, of course. Just another language.

The current administration has taken the tact that ANY argument, no matter
how irrational, to advance their legal position, must be used.  That has
to colapse opon itself after a while.  Whether it be through the total
errosion of their reputation capitol (What little is left.) or through
judges who cry "enough" and toss out the entire specious line of
reasoning.

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