Re: SAFE forum -- remarks of Herb Lin

You're entitled to any spin you wish (see your [...] below).  But my
  original intent was to say
  the part about "and it is" in any event; unfortunately, the audience
  started snickering
  before I got to it.  In the future, I will say "Crime prevention ought to
  be, and is, a part
  of the FBI's mission", thereby pre-empting premature snickering by an
  audience
  pre-disposed to be unfriendly or derisive to law enforcement.

  Begin personal comment from herb:

  The "overview and recommendations" document summarizing
  the report notes that

  "Input from [..] diverse sources demonstrated to the committee
  a considerable amount of confrontation and disconnect between
  interest groups (e.g., information technology vendors, businesses,
  law enforcement, private individuals, national security) that fail
  to understand or appreciate the validity of each other's policy
  needs and interests with respect to cryptography.  . . .

       Public debate based on hyperbole is unproductive.  All of the
  stakes described above -- privacy for individuals, protection of
  sensitive
  or proprietary information for businesses, ensuring the continuing
  reliability
  and integrity of nationally critical information systems and networks,
  law
  enforcement access to stored and communicated information for purposes of
  investigating and prosecuting crime, and national security access to
  information
  stored or communicated by foreign powers or other entities and
  organizations
  whose interests and intentions are relevant to the national security and
  the
  foreign policy interests of the United Statesare legitimate; informed
  public
  discussion of the issues must begin by acknowledging the legitimacy both
  of information security for law-abiding individuals and businesses and of
  information gathering for law enforcement and national security
  purposes."

  My experience with the FBI and other law enforcement officials is that
  they are honorable
  people trying to do a very hard job.  You may disagree with them on
  policy grounds --
  indeed, the NRC report does disagree with the Administration in certain
  important ways --
  but in my personal opinion, law enforcement deserves credit rather than
  censure for trying to anticipate a future problem,  You may believe the
  proposed solution to be inappropriate, but I'd
  ask those of you who follow the debate to engage it on substantive rather
  than ad hominem grounds,  Many of you in the cypherpunk community have
  done so, and I applaud such efforts.

  [End personal  comment]

  herb
  ==
On Wed, 3 Jul 1996, Herb Lin wrote:

> Folks -- I object to the characterization of my remarks about crime
prevention > being made with sarcasm.  The complete remark was "Crime
prevention ought > to be part of the FBI's mission, ... and it is -- ask
them, and they
acknowledge
>  that."

OK, sorry, my reading.  I'd certainly hate to jeopardize any professional
relationships by implying that you'd been poking fun at them on purpose.
There's already far too much distrust to go around.

As I recall, the sequence went "Crime prevention ought to be part of the
FBI's mission [audience snickers, Herb realizes what he just said and
smiles]... and it is -- ask them, and they acknowledge that."

The best standup comics are the genuine straight men, I guess. To avoid any
trouble, I'll be using that line *without* specific attribution from now
on.

-rich

> My experience with the FBI and other law enforcement officials is that
> they are honorable people trying to do a very hard job.

Very good point.  However, their primary representatives are still Louie
Freeh, Jim Kallstom (sp?) and a few others who specialize in
technologically-inaccurate hype.  They have special backdoor access
priviledges to Congress which none of us have (at least on the scale with
which they can summon).  They do NOT have to answer to anyone, except on
warm and fuzzy Congressional hearings during which the technical inaccuracy
of their words are rarely challenged.

I would give a lot to have a public one-on-one discussion/debate with Freeh
or Kallstrom.  The problem is that they will stick to the obvious sound
bites of "child pornographers" and "terrorists" instead of discussing the
technical issues.

I do agree that, if Freeh and cypherpunks would stop the hyperbole, and
start discussing what would help privacy as well as law enforcement, then
much more useful 

If Freeh and Kallstom played fair, and did not insist on behind-the-scene
lobbying for Digital Telephony and GAK, then I might even consider
compromising my hard-line stance against GAK and encryption regulation.
However, they insisted on pushing it even when they could not get enough
public support.

Right now, THEY have the power, THEY have the access, THEY do not have to
answer to us (and the Devil is always in the details), so I think it is a
bit unfair to say that some cypherpunk is being too harsh on the FBI.

They (the FBI) are supposed to serve us.  Instead, they are taking away
our own control of our lives.  It reminds me much of the power-hungry
MIS suit who swoops in and takes away all of our root passwords without
setting up the backups and the firewalls and add to our productivity.

We can get some solutions for both sides, but it takes work, and Freeh and
Kallstrom (and Clinton) cannot get political credits for these more subtle
solutions, so they must choose between highly-visible (but technically
wrong) solutions and real (but possibly thankless) solutions.  I get the
feeling I know what they are choosing right now.

Ern