[42306] in North American Network Operators' Group
OT: Re: ticketing summary & OT plea - Crypto
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Matthew S. Hallacy)
Fri Sep 14 17:48:46 2001
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 15:48:12 -0600
From: "Matthew S. Hallacy" <poptix@techmonkeys.org>
To: nanog@merit.edu
Message-ID: <20010914154812.C19288@techmonkeys.org>
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In-Reply-To: <20010914081612.A6647@gwyn.tux.org>; from timothy.brown@pobox.com on Fri, Sep 14, 2001 at 08:16:12AM -0400
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
[snip]
> I have an offtopic plea completely unrelated to the above item, though.
> Wired is reporting @ http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46816,00.html
> that Judd Gregg, a Republican Senator from NH, called yesterday for a
> global prohibition on encryption products without backdoors for
> government surveillance. I'd like to urge the netops community,
> whom I have no other method to communicate to, to send some correspondence
> to your congresscritters on the issue. I'd like that correspondence
> to say that the idea of having backdoors in crypto is bad, but I know
> that some of you might disagree.
Out of all the news I've seen, (web, TV, etc) I've not seen anyone point out
that they (anyone who would put encryption to devious uses) already have
encryption without backdoors, what makes anyone think that they're suddenly
going to comply with new laws regarding a 'backdoor key'? It hasn't worked
with guns, it hasn't worked with pirated software, it hasn't worked with
anything else, people who are willing to hijack planes and ram them into
buildings full of people aren't going to give a second thought to violating
a law regarding backdoor keys for governments.
> As a side note, can anyone who has submitted correspondence to congress
> folks drop me a private line? I had a couple of questions.
Any correspondence should probably include at least a brief mention of
the above aruement, I see this as a knee-jerk reaction, and an attempt
to further careers, and limit peoples rights.
>
> Thanks,
> Tim
Matthew S. Hallacy
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