Extremely Disappointing: Political Cryptography

Dear All,

I have been an advocate of strong cryptography since my first haphazard
experiments with my own pitiful encryption schemes. Upon gaining a
little more knowledge on the subject, I have become an even stronger
advocate. The right for one to think what one likes is supposedly
"gratis", but this right is almost useless if the ability to communicate
one's thoughts to others _in a private and secure manner_ is burgeoned
by those who would grant not only to assumedly trustworthy government
departments but anyone with enough will the ability and the permission
to not only control the manner in which we communicate our thoughts with
others, but to also listen in.

And yet this is not the worst part of it all. We are reliant upon
politicians, most of whom one would be encouraged to believe are there
only due to such qualities as charisma and "political nouse", a term
unto itself really, to make decisions on that which they really have
very little idea. This decision by the U.S. Senate to endorse an action
that will only repress the whole world's ability to communicate in
private (the US being the leader by far in matters of technology,
especially the Internet) is yet another example of those ill-educated in
a particular matter succumbing to either a knee-jerk political reaction,
or a knee-jerk personal reaction. Or, as in this case, a combination of
both.

> Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), committee chair and chief
> sponsor of the measure, led the attack, saying
> Congress must "stop child pornography on the Internet
> and Internet gambling. These legitimate law
> enforcement concerns cannot and should not be
> overlooked or taken lightly."

"Child Pornorgrapy and the Internet" - in my opinion it is "The Phrase
that Pays" in practically every situation to do with the Internet,
politically speaking. I am sure that you could put forward a very good
argument as to why practically any facet of the internet should be
controlled, repressed, and spied upon, simply by mentioning the "phrase
that pays" in the company of Politicians. It engenders the
aforementioned knee-jerk reactions, encourages them, and stokes their
fires to a new level.

Over here in Australia it is generally accepted that most Australians
have a general disdain of politicians and politics in general.
Naturally, the young are at times passionately ideological, particularly
arts students with too much time on their hands, and they always have
faith in "the new vision", the new guard of politicians - the young
politicians, who will lead them in their struggle. Little do they
realise that this "new guard" had to get to their positions somehow -
usually by gaining favour with the "old guard". And in doing so they
effectively kneecap themselves : always chained to pleasing those who
got them there, they are never able to actually do anything they
themselves passionately believe (or believed) in, and they themselves
end up becoming the "old guard", sucked into a vicious circle. If indeed
they ever believed in what they claimed to be aiming to do.

> He warned that allowing encryption to be exported
> would permit child pornographers to use it. "If it's
> being used for child pornography? Are we going to say
> that's just fine? That's it's just business? I don't
> think so."

Such narrow-mindedness and short-sightedness is something we would
probably have all hoped to not have seen, particularly in "leaders" of
such stature. "The Phrase that Pays" seems to only be so applicable to
the Internet: these same politicians would no doubt scream to all
reaches of the globe the right for all to free speech, and yet would
they repress the export of printing presses? Computers? Paper? Pencils?
I am sure that these tools are far more crucial to the business of Child
Pornographers than strong cryptography. It seems ridiculous to try and
control or at least impinge upon the business of child pornographers by
controlling the export of something that will only affect the ability of
those outside of the United States to view or obtain such material. But
then again, where the Communications Decency Act, a law of sheer
repression, failed, systems such as Government Key Escrow might succeed.
A later part of the article summarised this beautifully:

> Sen. John Ashcroft (R-MO) tried to disagree. "It's like
> photography. We're not going to [ban] photography if
> someone takes dirty pictures." (At this point, one of
> the more deaf committee members asked, "Pornography?
> Are we going to ban pornography?")
>
I guess that the whole idea of children's uncontrolled access to
information had to follow:

> Then Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-Tex.) chimed in,
> saying she doesn't want "children to have access to
> pornography or other bad types of information."

I am also an advocate of freedom of information, as strange as it might
sound to combine that with advocacy for privacy and security. In my
opinion there is a time and a place for everything, and it is also so
with information: certain things should remain private, and justifiably
so (e.g Credit Card numbers, bank account details, Social Security
details), but most other information can only lead in the long run to
the enhancement of our ability to learn about ourselves, and the world
in which we live. Attempting to generally control access to information
is the next step in the progression of repression of freedom. First you
repress the ability to communicate thoughts privately, as mentioned
before, and then you try and control the thoughts of the current and
next generation by restricting access to information that does not fit a
personal model. The next generation will thus have grown up accepting
this as normal, and the world is safer place. And so we have a model
society...a society that reflects the views of a past generation's
society. Every "Condition" Perpetuates Itself, Due To Every
"Condition's" Fear Of Change.

Perhaps I am being a bit alarmist. Perhaps I have been influenced too
greatly by George Orwell's "1984". Or perhaps I am seeing something here
that others have known for ages, and I have only just seen it. I am not
sure of that, but I am sure of this: I am just of voting age now in
Australia, and if I could add my voice to those trying to convince
politicians of the obvious truth here in the USA then I would. But
Australia always has and probably always will continue to follow the
path of the United States. Perhaps the only way for me to be able to
share my thoughts with others will be to remain so unimportant that
nobody could possibly be interested in me.

Benjamin Grosman

-------------------------------
Apologies to those who were forced to read a very rambling diatribe
against this whole situation. I have tried to formulate my thoughts upon
reading the news of the defeat into something at least slightly
coherent. I will try at a later point to polish this up...

On Fri, 20 Jun 1997, Benjamin Grosman wrote:

> yet another example of those ill-educated in
> a particular matter succumbing to either a knee-jerk political reaction,

Agencies such as the FCC, FAA, and FDA were created to make policy
recommendations in technical areas were politicians aren't qualified. If
we're really going to have government stomping all over the Internet, it's
crazy that there isn't an appropriate agency to make appropriate policy
recommendations in this area, which is more technical and developing more
rapidly than fields such as aviation or food&drug, where senators and
congresspeople generally accept advice from presidential appointees who 
collaborate with industry.

I'm not saying I _want_ an agency making decisions for us; only that it 
would be slightly less hideously exasperating than our present situation, 
where technoliterates are being ruled by technoilliterates.

The FCC actually made some halfway decent decisions determining standards
in broadcasting, before the agency became terminally incestuous and
corrupt. We might get two or three good years out of a Federal Internet
Agency, depending who was appointed to run it. 

--CP

> I'm not saying I _want_ an agency making decisions for us; only that
> it
> would be slightly less hideously exasperating than our present
> situation,
> where technoliterates are being ruled by technoilliterates.
>
I would totally agree with you here...having an agency is definitely the
best of a bad set of choices.

> corrupt. We might get two or three good years out of a Federal
> Internet
> Agency, depending who was appointed to run it.

And that would probably be a major problem...finding someone with whom
both the government and industry are happy.

Ben

Rant ahead.

On Fri, 20 Jun 1997, Benjamin Grosman wrote:

> > I'm not saying I _want_ an agency making decisions for us; only that
> > it would be slightly less hideously exasperating than our present
> > situation, where technoliterates are being ruled by technoilliterates.

> I would totally agree with you here...having an agency is definitely the
> best of a bad set of choices.

Doubtful. Under the current situation our technoilliterate oppononents are
passing demonstrably unworkable and heavy-handed laws, which, if the CDA
was any indication, have a high chance of being at least partly
neutralized in the courts and the benefit of being a headache to
implement technologically and commercially. 

If our opponents institutionalize the regulation of the Net, including a
GAK law, on the other hand, the policy will have the benefit of an entire
federal bureaucracy working behind it day by day to make it workable and
turn it into something acceptable to the judiciary and to those who are
seeking compromise. 

We will then have another FCC, but this time with its own pet FBI, and
given enough time (these people are essentially government employed
full-time lobbyists) everyone but us nutty libertarians will regard their
methods as common practice and something without which the Net would be
unlivable. Society will once again fall for the fallacy of government
necessity and we'll get divided and conquered.  Just ask the average
person what they think of abolishing the FCC and you will see what I mean. 

In the long run a new dedicated bureaucracy would be the worst of all
possible choices, first because it would actually function and second
because it would never go away. 

> > corrupt. We might get two or three good years out of a Federal
> > Internet Agency, depending who was appointed to run it.

3 semi-bad years instead of a couple of scary years of GAK being fought
head-on, in exchange for a permanent problem. 

> And that would probably be a major problem...finding someone with whom
> both the government and industry are happy.

Locking the rest of us out. Divide and conquer.

Charles:

This has nothing to do with federal crypto regs. It just
had your email addr in it.

Got a question:

Are you the Charles Platt who wrote "The Gas"?

If so, thats great!

I surfed by it yesterday on the Loompanics site.

Jim Burnes
jim.burnes@ssds.com

On Mon, 23 Jun 1997, Jim Burnes wrote:

> 
> Charles:
> 
> This has nothing to do with federal crypto regs. It just
> had your email addr in it.
> 
> Got a question:
> 

Sorry for polluting the list.  Accidental cross-posting.

jim

At 12:14 AM 6/20/97 -0400, Charles Platt wrote:
>I'm not saying I _want_ an agency making decisions for us; only that it 
>would be slightly less hideously exasperating than our present situation, 
>where technoliterates are being ruled by technoilliterates.

We're far better off without one, for a bunch of reasons.
1) Congress does stupid knee-jerk things without understanding them,
but it only does them when there's a lot of public pressure,
or focused insider pressure, or when its legs itch,
but after it's done it goes off and does stupid knee-jerk things
about some other "problem" that it wants to "help".
Attention Deficit Disorder is your friend, at least when Congress has it.
The only time it does things on a long-term basis are when it really cares;
things like funding the military-industrial-welfare complex
and local pork.  The Internet probably isn't there yet,
even though it's almost as much fun as Dope or Commies to rant about.

2) Bureaucracies, on the other hand, have self-perpetuation as Job 1.
Sure, they may understand their subject matter a bit better, but
Job 1 means continuing to do "useful" things to "help" the country,
most of which are almost by definition bad, and finding ways to
increase their scope of control.  Unlike Congress, whose agenda
depends on which way the wind is blowing, their agenda is fixed.
What they do will not only be bad, but it will be done competently,
which is harder to throw out in court than knee-jerk stupid things.
Furthermore, it will be done quietly, broadly, and not distracted
by the crisis of the week.

>The FCC actually made some halfway decent decisions determining 
>standards in broadcasting, before the agency became terminally 
>incestuous and corrupt.

The FCC was terminally incestuous and corrupt from the beginning.
Its job, done quite well, was to restrict access to the airwaves,
just as the job of the other Roosevelt-era agricultural and
industrial programs was to create and preserve oligarchies in the 
names of "anti-trust" and "consumer protection".
FCC spectrum allocation policies, granting monopoly control of the
"commercial" parts of the spectrum and banning "commercial" speech 
on the "amateur" bands, have not only prevented a free market in
broadcasting, they've severely limited the span of opinions that
they consider to be "in the public interest" and therefore permitted
on the airwaves.

> We might get two or three good years out of a Federal Internet
>Agency, depending who was appointed to run it. 

We did actually get a few good years out of them - the DoD was
running it, and since their objective was to get _their_ job done,
they built a lot of good technology that was different than what the
phone monopolies and IBMs were building.  Yes, there was a political agenda:
you could only use the net for "non-commercial", government-contract-related,
or university purposes, but they fundamentally didn't care as long as you
weren't blatant about it, so the culture could develop in a more balanced
manner, and people could build interesting fun things essentially
un-supervised.

Those days are over, of course, and throwing out the government control
is far from a finished job, especially outside the US, but the free sector
is much larger than the bureaucratic sector, so they can't do much harm.


#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
#   (If this is a mailing list or news, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)

On Sat, 21 Jun 1997, Bill Stewart wrote:

> At 12:14 AM 6/20/97 -0400, Charles Platt wrote:
> >I'm not saying I _want_ an agency making decisions for us; only that it 
> >would be slightly less hideously exasperating than our present situation, 
> >where technoliterates are being ruled by technoilliterates.
> 
> 

I'm not sure anymore who wrote what, but I think the idea
of having another three-letter agency involved with this is
very dangerous.

Lets take the almost unlimited abuses of the FDA, BATF, IRS etc.  These
agencies have been assigned law enforcement powers by proxy.  The
laws they enforce are administrative law.  There is nothing to
stop them from declaring administrative regs and then calling out
the jack-booted nazi's to enforce them.

Tell me this isn't true.

Plenty of cases of the FDA and BATF doing just that.

Have a better one,

Jim Burnes