[48730] in Cypherpunks
Clipper
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Roger Schlafly)
Tue Jan 30 18:42:48 1996
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 15:22:52 -0800
From: rschlafly@attmail.com (Roger Schlafly)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
>> One of the interesting things about the whole crypto debate, going back at
>> least to the Clipper announcement (and actually some months before) has
>> been that the pro-restrictions, pro-GAK side of the argument has almost no
>> defenders! Except for David Sternlight, Dorothy Denning, and Donn Parker
>> ("attack of the killer Ds"?), there are almost no public spokesmen for the
>> pro-restriction, pro-GAK side.
>> There's quite a few folks in the Yale CS department that are pro-Clipper
>> or fence sitters. They justify it in class by claiming that law
>> enforcement needs these abilities if LE is to remain effective.
I don't think "pro-Clipper" properly characters the enemy.
Clipper is chip used in a voluntary federal standard. If we had
sufficient civil liberties guarantees, I bet even a lot of
c'punks wouldn't object to govt agencies using clipper chips.
But the Freeh/Denning position, as I understand it, is that:
* privacy is not a right
* the govt should routinely spy on citizens
* strong crypto should be illegal
* no public debate on the underlying issues
Are there other computer scientists with this position?
Roger
