[67641] in Cypherpunks
(fwd) Big Brother vs. Cypherpunks
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mark Heaney)
Tue Oct 8 17:28:05 1996
From: apteryx@super.zippo.com (Mark Heaney)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Date: Tue, 08 Oct 1996 20:50:22 GMT
Reply-To: apteryx@super.zippo.com
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On Mon, 07 Oct 1996 17:13:11 -0400, John Young <jya@pipeline.com> wrote
> Time, October 14, 1996, p. 78.
>
> The Netly News
>
> Joshua Quittner
>
> Big Brother vs. Cypherpunks
[snip]
> Are they right? It's hard to know whom to believe in this
> cloak-and-dagger debate. Civil libertarians tend to gloss
> over the fact that the world is full of bad people with
> crimes to hide. The software industry -- which makes 48%
> of its profit overseas -- is clearly less concerned with
> privacy than with losing foreign sales. And it may be no
> accident that the Administration chose to start making
> concessions the same week an influential software CEO --
> Netscape's Jim Barksdale -- excoriated Clinton's
> cryptopolicy and endorsed Bob Dole.
Oh my, you mean diffferent sides of a controverial topic are saying
different things? What's a po reporter to do?=20
> The issue is too complex -- and too important -- for
> political gamesmanship. It will never get sorted out
> until somebody starts playing it straight.
Translation: I'm a lazy journalist who considers any controversy that
requires more than just asking the two sides about it as too complicated =
to
understand, and my editor wants me to dumb everything down anyway.
I guess it is hard to turn a large number of mathematical, technical, =
legal
and philosophical issues into no more than 3-syllable words, 15 word
sentences, 5 line paragraphs filling 1 column of a magazine.=20
Maybe this reporter should have viewed the article on lattice crypto in =
The
Economist a couple of months back It's not impossible to explain the =
basic
issues at stake if you are willing to do some research and not insult the
intelligence of your audience.=20
Of course, Time would be unlikely to print such an article that precludes
the semi-literate from understanding it. Besides which, I'm sure that =
there
is something *important* happening to Brad Pitt or Julia Roberts that =
needs
to be covered first.
Mark
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Mark Heaney finger snipe@starburst.cbl.cees.edu for public key
PGP Fingerprint=3D BB D8 9B 07 51 87 05 AC 47 7B F2 4F A6 AB 1A CD =20
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