Re: excerpt from William P. Crowell

[Eric Murray <ericm@lne.com>]

John W. Noerenberg writes:
> 
> Excerpt from prepared testimony of William P. Crowell deputy director,
> National Security Agency before the House National Security Committee
> Wednesday, July 29, 1997:
> 
> [Intro elided]
> 
> Goodlatte Bill and  National Security
> 
> Before I go into the details of what the nation needs in a balanced
> encryption policy - a policy that gets strong encryption to be used widely
> while at the same time protects the nation's public safety and national
> security - it is important to understand that the Goodlatte bill would
> directly threaten national security.

[yadda yadda]

> Despite Being Available, Encryption is Not Being Widely Used
> 
> Most measurements of encryption are inadequate (incomplete or inconclusive)
> since they do not show how many people are using encryption. Encryption can
> be measured in a number of ways. Depending on how it is measured, one could
> misconstrue the data to conclude that "the encryption genie is out of the
> bottle" or that the bottle is tightly plugged.

That's some nice FUD to throw out.

> The fact of the matter is that encryption is widely available (e.g.,
> embedded in tens of millions of commercial software products) but, based on
> our impressions from market surveys, etc., is not widely used. Those who
> argue that government encryption policies are outdated because "the
> encryption genie is out of the bottle" (i.e., there are many products
> advertised to contain encryption and some of them are available from the
> Internet) must consider two important perspectives.
> 
> First, encryption is not now being, and will not be, used to its fullest
> potential (with confidence by 100s of millions of people) until there is an
> infrastructure in place to support it.


Oh my, this is wonderful.

The reason that encryption isn't widely used is _directly_ because
of current government policy!!  They're using the results of their
own bad policy to justify more bad policy.

"In order to have widespread encryption, we must restrict it"

"Ignorance is strength"

"Freedom is slavery"




-- 
 Eric Murray   (ericm  at  lne.com   or   nabletech.com)     PGP keyid:E03F65E5