[917] in libertarians
Re: PGP and mail
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (sethf@MIT.EDU)
Mon Apr 24 04:31:48 1995
From: sethf@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 1995 04:30:55 -0400
To: libertarians@MIT.EDU
Some technical and historical notes:
There are many tricks for reading what's inside a sealed
envelope, well-known to magicians. Steaming one open is HARD - has
anyone ever actually tried it? Experiment with it, you might be
surprised at how difficult and detectable it is.
Random keywords to fool snooper programs are on the level of
Secret Decoder Rings. They are fun, and they'll catch people who want to
play Secret Agent Man, but keywords are toys. Just some of the stuff
that's been publically released is impressive in its sophistication.
The NSA declassified some system of indexing by making a comparison of
n-grams in a message, which was fascinating. And that was what they
*made public*. Or look up the technique of "differential cryptanalysis".
PGP is actually in the government-unbreakable league, as far as is known,
that's why there is profound concern among people who understand it all
(but very few sectors of the government actually do comprehend it).
The Militia Movement people are NOT necessarily your friends.
Yes, they love guns and hate liberals, but that does not a Libertarian
make (I hope!). Ask them what they think about legalizing currently
illegal drugs. Or prostitution. Or what their opinion is of
homosexually. Or burning flags. Some of these guys are downright scary,
just read some of their discussion. Don't fall into the trap that anyone
who criticizes the government is therefore good - and agrees with you on
anything else. This is a segment of American society that has long
historical roots, we're just hearing about them a lot now because they
represent the armed end of extreme right-wing politics that's being
trumpeted. They DO have extreme right-wing views, make no mistake about
that. There's been a sort of white-washing, an attempt to imply that
they are being smeared by the government just because they support gun
rights. No way, one of the glories of the Net is that you can see
exactly what they say, and some of it is not pretty at all.
In terms of government takeover, readers should know the US came
a lot closer in the 1970's, under what many feared would be King Richard I.
There was one incident where a mass arrest occurred, with thousands
of people held in a stadium for a few days - this is kind of hard to
find discussed, but I think it's in Howard Zinn's book (don't hold to
that, though, I'm not looking at a copy now). The potential is there, as
always, but objectively Clinton is nowhere near where what happened to
the US under Nixon. That was the whole point of Watergate - the story
was not so much in what was done, but who it was done to - the other
political party So what I'm saying is keep some perspective. This is
not a plot to imprison dissenters and allow Clinton to declare himself
dictator via a state of emergency. The US nearly had that with Nixon,
and the difference was evident.
The OK bombing may bode very ill for civil liberties, though,
and that's a critical point. The more I study this issue, the more I'm
impressed with what Phil Zimmerman did, because he's actually having an
effect. PGP was months of work, and significant risk. It's easy to
flame, but much harder to actually do something. This is an area where
MIT people are well-positioned to actually have some influence, and some
have actually done so (see the story about PGP and MIT in Simpson
Garfinkel's book).
So who wants to volunteer to be moderator of misc.activism.militia?
================
Seth Finkelstein
sethf@mit.edu
