New Add-On Law / Re: Freeh's Testimony (FBI Seeks Domestic GAK)

Duncan Frissell wrote:
 
> More generally, it is legal not to speak and thus to deprive police and
> prosecutors of the contents of your mind.  Crypto just extends this right.

  Duncan, as he often does, points out a small truth which goes
to the very heart of the issue of criminalizing strong encryption.

  Criminalizing crypto is criminalizing _private_speech_ and also
_private_thought_.
  Mark my words, when the day comes that LEA's have the technology
to read human thoughts, then we will be seeing this same debate 
taking place in that arena. The "legitimate needs of law enforcement"
rhetoric, et al, will be drug out for the billionth time to thwart
the danger that a CypherPunk might fart in the woods without an
LEA recording it.

  Think back to the first time you read "1984" and think about what
you, yourself, could _add_ to the book from your own personal
knowledge and experience since that date.
  If we added all of the instances of "Big Brother" becoming an
accepted reality of everyday life since then, the tome would rival
"War and Peace" in volume and scope.

  If I choose to write my prayers on a word processor, in order to
better organize my spiritual thoughts and be able to reference them
to remember my promises to God, does the State have a right to
demand I let them view those prayers, and private religious thoughts?
  If I use a computer to write my attorney, perhaps even outlining
my activities, etc., in regard to criminal charges against me, does
the State have a right to demand access to it?
  Am I allowed to whisper to my lawyer in court, but not to type
what I want him to know on a computer screen he has in front of
him in the same courtroom?

  Am I allowed to tell a $200/hour psychiatrist that someone made me
mad enough to "kill" them in order to stay sane enough not to do so,
and have it kept confidential, but be denied the right, if I am a
poor person, to do the exact same thing in writing on my computer,
with the help of a $4.95 paperback self-help/psychology book?
  Have private thoughts been "corporatized/governmentized" somehow?
Are our private thoughts sacred only when shared with a recognized
authority? If I share them with myself, do they become the property
of the State?

  Am I totally out of my mind, or has life become tremendously
fucking scary, and nobody but me has noticed?
  Sometimes I feel like the guy on the plane in the "Twilight Zone"
movie, who is the only one who can see the monster on the plane's
wing that is endangering everyone's life. And if you shoot at the
monster nobody else can see, then they strap you down and take you
to the rubber room. (Obvious analogy to McVeigh and Death Row 
purely unintentional.)
  {"Your honor, this search warrant is for the purpose of cracking
the suspect's head open with a crowbar and prying his brain out so
that we can poke around, in _good_faith_, I assure you, and look
for evidence that pertains to a crime that may have been committed.")

  If you don't provide a breathalyzer sample, you are automatically
guilty of drunken driving (even if the DMV License Tester is handing
you a perfect score/report as the officer places you in handcuffs).
  I have no doubt that under future key escrow laws that your prayers
to God and your letters to yourself detailing the most intimate 
details of your life will make you automatically guilty of tax evasion
unless you allow strangers who are hostile to you (police, judges,
prosecutors) to read them.
  Yes, and one day, even our private thoughts will be considered to
automatically make us guilty criminals unless we allow LEA's access
to them. (The "lie detector" is a case in point, and it has in the
past come dangerously close to being afforded the same status as
the breathalyzer, even though it represents "voodoo" as much as it
does "science.")

  If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody hears it--is it a drug
trafficking tree or a child molesting tree?

TruthMonger

>   Am I totally out of my mind, or has life become tremendously
> fucking scary, and nobody but me has noticed?

This list is quite simply the only place I know of where single sentences 
as perceptive and straight to the point as the quote above are made on a 
regular basis. I am sure many potential revolutionaries have ended up in 
asylums over the years as a result of the consequences of the above 
effect, if the "terrorist" retains their sanity they are put in an asylum 
as a dangerous lunatic, more normally the total stupidity and blindness 
of those around them drive them to genuine insanity. This same effect can 
likely be used to explain the high rate of insanity in the late years of 
many of the pasts great philosophers.

>   Sometimes I feel like the guy on the plane in the "Twilight Zone"
> movie, who is the only one who can see the monster on the plane's
> wing that is endangering everyone's life. 

Small question: I seem to remember this film, is it the small green 
monster which keeps dancing and fucking with the planes engines?


> And if you shoot at the
> monster nobody else can see, then they strap you down and take you
> to the rubber room. (Obvious analogy to McVeigh and Death Row 
> purely unintentional.)

Of course, and anyone who saw such an analogy without it being pointed 
out would probably be a dangerous terrorist anyway.

>   Yes, and one day, even our private thoughts will be considered to
> automatically make us guilty criminals unless we allow LEA's access
> to them. (The "lie detector" is a case in point, and it has in the
> past come dangerously close to being afforded the same status as
> the breathalyzer, even though it represents "voodoo" as much as it
> does "science.")

How much confidence do US courts have in polygraph tests? I believe UK 
systems qualify the tests as evidence to be considered as ancillary to 
the other evidence rather than relied on as a major part of a case.
Not really relevant though, polygraph tests are hopelessly innacurate, 
any good poker player or general good liar could beat one, or indeed 
someone who practiced one of the many forms of meditation in which ones 
blood pressure, respiration and pulse may be consciously controlled.

> TruthMonger

BTW, one of the many Mongers of several sorts uses toad.com for all 
messages, I`m sure it is now just a forwarder but just to point it out, 
it may still be censored.

        Datacomms Technologies data security
       Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk
  Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org    
       Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/
      Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85
     "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

>>   Sometimes I feel like the guy on the plane in the "Twilight Zone"
>> movie, who is the only one who can see the monster on the plane's
>> wing that is endangering everyone's life. 
>
>Small question: I seem to remember this film, is it the small green 
>monster which keeps dancing and fucking with the planes engines?

You've been caught by advancing technology.  In the movie version,
the monster was green and scary-looking.  In the original TV episode,
with William Shatner as the armed passenger on the plane,
the monster looked like a man in a cheap white gorilla suit :-)



#			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.)