Re: WSJ article on PGP

["Jim Sewell" <jims@Central.KeyWest.MPGN.COM>]

Some comments regarding the WSJ article as reported by an anonymous poster.

> >From The Wall Street Journal
> Vol. LXXV No. 138
> Thursday April 28, 1994
> 
...
> computer makers to build into their machines hardware that would allow
> law-enforcement agencies to decipher any code that was used.  The proposal
> outraged confidentiality-minded corporations and computer users alike.
> Eventually, it was dropped.

	Can you say Clipper boys and girls?  I thought you could.  
	(Dropped, sheesh)

>    But investigators say PGP and other encryption systems aid crime.

	Yeah, and so do guns, and police scanners, and cars, and hatchets,
	and every other tool we use!  Legislating tools won't work.  You 
	can only somewhat-successfully legislate the improper use of them.

>    Encryption also raises some eyebrows inside corporations.  Mr. Bass, the
> Washington lawyer, notes that most companies assert the right to read
> employees' e-mail, since it is composed on their computers and travels their
> networks.  "What will they do when people start encrypting messages to each
> other?" he asks.

	Respect privacy?

>    Without e-mail encryption, widespread surveillance would be easier.  In 
> theory, CIA, FBI and police computers could tap telephone cables and look
> for key words such as "missile" or "bomb" to find people who needed closer
> watching.  Mr. Zimmermann says: "This is analogous to drift-net fishing."

	 If they did that people would use words like messenger or devastator
	 instead of missile and bomb.  "Like Duh!"


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