[116987] in Cypherpunks
Re: New Clinton Anti-Privacy Czar? (was Re: NewsScan Daily, 24
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Tue Aug 24 20:36:55 1999
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Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 20:21:48 -0400
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net, cryptography@c2.net
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
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Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
At 4:01 PM -0700 on 8/24/99, John Haggerty lobs a low, slow (and,
apparently, eponymous) one towards the plate. Hettinga puts his nail
file away. He bangs the clods out of his cleats with his bat. He
lights, and finishes, a Macanudo Prince Philip Cafe. He counts *all*
the stitches on the ball. He flips his phone and orders an
extra-large garbage pizza, with swimmers, for a snack, later, in the
dugout. And, finally, when the ball gets there, Hettinga swings...:
> Exactly how does this hurt anyone oooohhh the government can steal
>my cc#? Well
> they could do that anytime they wanted before.
Nope.
Personally, I think it's yet another way to stall commercially
ubiquitous cryptography. That's why ITAR went from State to Commerce
and became EAR. That's why Aaron went all around the world getting
other states to promulgate Wassenaar laws, and why, to a one, they
will reject the idea -- primarily for economic reasons. That's why
Janet Reno just sent her recent EuroFUD letter, which was promptly
laughed out of Dodge (okay, maybe it was Vienna) for the same reason.
It's why the administration itself says that DES is DED, anymore,
because they can't recommend, with a straight face anyway, a
cryptographic protocol which is supposed to encrypt billion-dollar
currency transactions but only costs $350 -- with a half-life of 18
months -- to break.
More stalling by the administration, in other words, and I think this
bit here is just part of it.
Meanwhile, our friends in Vancouver and Montreal are having a field
day, as the latest "Home Invasion" press release from ZKS shows us.
Laughing at us like Terrence and whatsisname in the "Southpark"
movie, for the yutzes that we are, eh, for putting up with kind of
this kind of shoot-your-economic-foot crypto-silliness from people
who live in public housing, keep a money-laundering washing machine
on the Front Portico, a dead hey-baby-Mustang on blocks in the South
Lawn, and a pressroom of baying coon-dogs in the Rose Garden.
Yet, like Kyle's Mom, the Feds will be singing "Bomb Canada", next,
just watch...
Of course, having no military leg to stand on, and now no foreign
policy one either, the Klintonistas are running (okay, hopping) their
current series of last-stand stalls through the Blair Woods of
digital commerce. Which, to put the metaphor in a Cuisinart SuperPro,
is precisely the place where the steamroller can run over them the
best.
Cool.
Digital Commerce *is* Financial Cryptography, and all that.
(And, yes, ladies and germs, I know that Magaziner was "really on our
side", wink, wink, nudge, nudge, and that this nice new lady must be,
too, m'kay?...)
"My people won't come to the revolution unless there's punch and pie."
Cheers,
RAH
<the bat cracks, the crowd roars, Hettinga cracks a shiggie of his
own. After making the rounds, he repairs to the dugout, where he will
eat: Pizza.>
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
