Re:

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

At 09:18 PM 3/20/96 -0500, owner-cypherpunks@toad.com wrote:
>Since someone other than Jim Bell and THE LIST OF SHAME author thought I
>was being serious, I thought it wise to respond.

For the record, I couldn't tell whether you were serious or not. (most other 
people seem to have assumed that you were serious...)   Nevertheless, I 
replied, because I was afraid there were other people who were anxious to 
not take good advice merely because they didn't like the source.  If 
anything, I would say the other notes you received make it clear that my 
concern was justified.


>The notion that a measure of criticism from a known enemy, Dorothy
>Denning, corrects the many problems with Leahy's legislation is absurd.

True.  But it was apparently received without negative comment by a number 
of people who would also have "proudly" put their name on this nameless 
character's "list of shame."

For one, I don't really appreciate the pillorying of some of the names on 
that list, either, but there are a number of facts which bother me about 
this whole Leahy bill incident:

1.  The bill seems to be without fingerprints on it.  Nobody (other than 
Leahy, of course) has claimed that he had input into it.  Denning's recent 
comment at least implies that either she had no input, or was strongly 
dissatisfied at the eventual bill. (Despite this, there are plenty of 
"legitimate needs of law enforcement" clauses in that bill, and it is not 
conceivable that she wouldn't have been consulted if the author of the bill 
had any sympathy for the anti-encryption side.)  

Likewise, nobody on "our side" has made the fact of their input known, 
whether or not that input did any good. The question, therefore, is "Who 
knew what and when?"  Who was consulted?  What were their objections?  What 
objections weren't satisfied?  Since the bill at least superficially 
addresses some of our concerns, SOMEBODY must have told Leahy what we want.  
Who?


2.  I haven't seen any analysis of this bill other than Peter Junger's, even 
and especially from some people and organizations that originally came out 
in favor of it.  If anything, those people would be expected to be defending 
their positions, but they've not backed up that early support with anything 
close to a believable position.  (Most are silent.)   The implication is 
that they had no such early analysis done, and came out in favor of the bill 
anyway.  Worse, they aren't correcting their position based on the more 
detailed study that has been done subsequently. 

3.  Because she's a negative barometer,  Denning knows that a positive 
review by her would be as close as she could do to give the "kiss of death" 
to this bill.  Her putative opposition is, therefore, far more interesting 
to us.  If anything, it gives us a marvelous opportunity to ensure the death 
of a bad bill.



I'm waiting for somebody to explain to me why we can't simply re-write the 
Leahy bill, take out all the bad parts and put a number of new protections 
in, and send it back to Leahy and condition our support on that edited bill. 
 If Leahy really thinks he's doing a favor for the pro-encryption people, 
he'll support the corrected bill wholeheartedly.  If, on the other hand, 
it's all just a fraud, there's no hope, and in that case it's better than no 
bill be passed than one that contains a few booby-traps that will explode 
shortly after the bill is passed. 

As far as I can see, time is on our side.  Industry will continue to insist 
on free export of encryption, and there will be few in Congress to oppose 
it.  We already have the 1st amendment which SHOULD defend encryption, 
unless that protection is implicitly weakened by allowing a precent for the 
control of encryption.  In other words, we're going to win in a year or so 
regardless of this Leahy bill, so we can afford to be hard-nosed with our 
support or lack of it.

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com