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- From: mike@vort.cuc.ab.ca (Mike Nemeth)
- Subject: RE: Limits on the Use of Cryptography
- Message-ID: <1992Nov12.074058.5695@vort.cuc.ab.ca>
- Distribution: na
- Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 07:40:58 GMT
- Lines: 78
-
- in Article 3944 of sci.crypt, ritter@cactus.org (Terry Ritter) writes...
-
- > Although the discussion of key registration has been interesting,
- > it does seem a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. Discussing the
- > proposition on a computer network invokes an inherent bias in most
- > readers. So, suppose we give the issue a different environment:
- >
- > The police bust an alleged child molester, and take possession
- > of his PC. They believe that the hard drive contains a full
- > database of young kids who have been *or may be* assaulted.
- > That database is enciphered.
-
- I have noticed this fascination, nay obsession, that the just-say-no-to-
- crypto side has with child pornography. The FBI and suppporters of various
- crypto-restricting bills use every opportunity to tell the public that
- this menace is growing beyond all leaps and bounds, and without the most
- Draconian measures it will surely overwhelm us all. 60 years ago it
- was "alcohol", and now you have the FBI, 30 years ago it was "communism",
- and you had McCarthy witch trials, a decade ago it was "drugs" and now
- you have "no-knock" warrants.
-
- > Now, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to defend
- > cryptography to ordinary voters, congress people and newspaper
- > reporters. You also need to explain to a relative of one of those
- > kids, someone who doesn't own or work with a computer, why the
- > government should "allow" private cryptography which could hide
- > this sort of information.
- >
- > You *could* say that cryptography does not molest children, that
- > only molesters molest children. Or you could say that if ciphers
- > are outlawed, only outlaws will have ciphers, and that criminals
- > would not register keys anyway. But the district attorney might
- > point out that, if the law required key registration (or even just
- > the delivery of keys *after* a formal court hearing), the molester
- > could at least be convicted on *that* charge, and would not be
- > molesting anybody for a while.
- >
- > So what do *you* say?
-
- I say that your argument is specious, and attempts to paint ordinary
- citizens who wish to keep their communications private as potential
- child molesters. I also say that the district attorney that would put
- forth such an argument in front of a jury would be cautioned, if not
- outright censured, by the presiding trail judge as being a deliberate
- attempt to sway the jury using a highly charged emotional issue,
- child pornography, that has little or no bearing on the central theme
- of the issue on trial, which is:
-
- Does a private citizen, using readily available technology, have the
- right to maintain his/her privacy against arbitrary government intrusion?
-
- Your use of childporn is a canard.
-
- Suppose that in a few years, a bill or a series of bills have passed
- into law that restrict crypto to government use only, and the penalty
- for a private citizen caught with a copy of PGP is civil forfeiture,
- heavy fines, and prison. To insure compliance with said laws, further
- directives have been instituted allowing the CryptoPolice to monitor
- every conversation, written or verbal, and to invade your home at any
- time to search for anything that might be the basis for illegal encryption.
- Your country's prison population, something on the order of 5% of your
- population, doubles, further unravelling your social programs as more and
- more scarce public money goes to maintain a outdated and ineffective punitive
- system. The underground crypto market blooms, and organized crime takes the
- biggest slice of the pie, bribing public officials to overlook illegal
- activities.
-
- Unrealistic you say? Hardly. What i have just described has already
- happened in your country, just replace the word "crypto" with the word
- "drugs". Did the "war on drugs" work? Again i say, hardly. What supporters
- of the "war on crypto" propose will be even worse, an abrogation of your
- civil rights to the point of extinction. You'll be as "safe" from childporn
- as the WOD made you "safe" from drugs.
-
- --
- An epic miniseries that has all the trashy wealth of detail of provocative
- daytime soaps...
- Mike Nemeth VORT Computing Calgary, Canada
-