[118537] in Cypherpunks
Re: AUCRYPTO: On oldy encryptions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sean Kelly)
Fri Oct 1 13:11:19 1999
From: Sean Kelly <sean.k@mindspring.com>
In-Reply-To: <37F47344.BC21AD3B@t-online.de>
Message-ID: <000355d46ab22e79_mailit@mail.bellatlantic.net>
Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 12:35:41 -0400
To: mok-kong.shen@t-online.de
Cc: aucrypto@suburbia.net, cypherpunks@toad.com
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Reply-To: Sean Kelly <sean.k@mindspring.com>
>Sean Kelly wrote:
>>
>
>> they're pretty safe. The question is, at one point is the tradeoff no
>longer
>> worth it.
>
>Borrowing your sentence, I was basically claiming that control of
>crypto is no longer worth the money and effort of the government
>doing it, because it is totally ineffective owing to the fact that
>every criminal who cares can nowadays do strong secret communications
>fairly well. That money can be spent for doing other sensible things
>for the citizens.
(I cc-ed this to the cypherpunks list because I beleive it is an appropriate
forum for this as well.)
I agree completely. However, the US government is terrible at changing its
stance on things, and the NSA, FBI, and CIA are all lobbying strongly for
crypto control. They also don't like to admit that they are ineffective
against.... anything. I really can't say much about other governments, as
I've only ever lived here.
Your argument is the one that has been used against crypto control for years
now, and things haven't changed very much. This may be ignorance on the part
of the policy-makers. I'm sure many of them are fairly computer (and
mathematics) illiterate and probably find the whole thing somewhat daunting.
If a larger segment of the population was vocal about this issue, it might be
more likely to change. As it stands, the government generally thinks they
know what is good for us better than we know ourselves.
Now more than ever there is a real chance at loosening control of strong
crypto. People are getting on the internet like crazy and that same fear of
viruses, hackers and whatnot could easily be used to fuel the fight for
strong crypto. Rather than lobbying the government directly, perhaps we
should be doing more to alert the people and the media to how little privacy
people have online and bring up crypto as a viable solution. Couple that
with a few (very) easy-to-use solutions and it could likely become the Next
Big Thing overnight.
Convincing a government of the sensible approach rarely works. Finding a way
to have every citizen screaming for it often does.
Sean
