Cryptographers practicing law?

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

At 01:28 PM 3/11/96 -0500, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>
>anonymous-remailer@shell.portal.com writes:
>> This is the second in a regular series of postings to expose
>> cryptographers and cypherpunks who are either lying to us or
>> making a very serious mistake in there judgement.
>
>No, this is the umpteenth stupid anonymous denunciation of people who
>deserve no such stupidity.
>
>You aren't fit to eat Bruce Schneier or Matt Blaze's toenail
>clippings.
>Perry

While I don't really appreciate this guy's style and anonymity any more than you do, 
it's a misleading argument to try to challenge his position based on 
(presumably) his crypto expertise or lack of it.  I don't doubt Schneier's 
or Blaze's commanding position in that limited area, but when it comes to 
the analysis of a bill affecting crypto, knowledge of the technical details 
of crypto is far less important than knowing how a prosecutor or court will 
interpret any given law.  

I'm an "expert" in neither field, but I knew enough to worry.  Further, 
after having read Junger's preliminary analysis, it is blatantly obvious 
that this bill doesn't constitute much of a step forward, and in fact is 
likely a retrenchment if the government has its way.  The "guarantees" the 
bill provides aren't really guarantees at all, they are "feel-good" 
conditional promises, and the whole thing is so shot full of holes that it's 
hard to imagine that it will provide any protection beyond what we have today.

As I noted in my original comment to VTW (Mr. Safdar, who hasn't taken the 
trouble to contradict, let alone respond to my comments) my biggest fear is 
that the organizations and people who originally came out in mistaken favor 
of this bill either won't see their mistake, or won't admit seeing it if 
they do.  (People are funny that way; they hesitate to admit it when they 
are clearly wrong; organizations are even worse on this score; tiny 
organizations are worse still, because they must "appear" to be externally 
consistent yet there are few "heads" to depend on to fix mistakes.) 

If anything, _MY_ mistake was in believing that the rest of the bill was 
acceptable if a single bad section was removed; I now believe (after seeing 
Junger's analysis, and a much more careful reading of the bill) that a 
serious re-write is mandatory. (In my 
own defense, I had only skimmed the rest of the bill once, I focussed my 
criticism on the one "killer" section that I could easily tell would be the 
most questionable item.)

This fiasco does, indeed, raise serious questions about the motivations and
credibility of those who have effectively endorsed this bill so soon:  It 
is doubtful whether we will get any accurate picture about the bill from 
anybody who is afraid of changing his original assessment.

I'd be just as willing to listen to "experts" quoted by the people who have 
(so far) expressed support for this bill.  Maybe, as he himself suggests, 
Junger is a bit too pessimistic. On the other hand, Junger has clearly 
raised many questions whose answers depend almost completely on the INTENT 
of people within the government, not the wording of the bill itself.  Since 
I believe their intent to be uniformly bad, it is hard to imagine how anyone 
could resurrect confidence in this bill to anyone who was similarly 
pessimistic.

And the people who originally claimed that the Administration would oppose 
this bill as "going too far" cannot now turn around and claim that the 
government's intent was anything other than bad, BTW.  We now see how little 
good this bill might do, and how much trouble it might allow the Feds to 
cause, so it's hard to imagine why anyone would have believed the bill (if 
passed) would not have been signed.

I predict that the organizations that have, so far, "endorsed" this bill 
will quietly stop doing so, but without any kind of specific retraction or 
apology or explanation.  I also believe that they will refuse to reveal 
whatever legal advice they originally received that induced them to endorse 
it, because they probably had none.

At least Leahy's bill is DOA.  However, I think it would be interesting and 
useful to do a re-write of this bill, addressing all of Junger's concerns, mine as 
well, and Tim May's to boot.   I recommend that we totally ignore comments  
such as those by Padgett Peterson which claimed that certain provision 
"must" be included for the bill to pass.

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com