Federal motivation

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Martin Minow wrote:
> EH: Why do the Fed's want access to plaintext? The motivation has
> not been made clear. Policy goals are stated in technological terms,
> not in policy terms.

Perhaps we can elaborate on this.  Judging from their actions, what
they want is a full blown police state.  They've seen the product, now
they want one of their own.  This is obvious to everybody on this
list, but sometimes people are coy about it, probably in an effort to
appear to be "legitimate".

This transcends the issue of crypto, although the problem will be more
manageable if the use of crypto remains legal.

What we are seeing is the fight for survival of the institutions
created during World War II.  Their only purpose now is self
promotion.  This was universally recognized ten years ago when the
Wall fell, but somehow the "peace dividend" never materialized and
they got another trillion dollars out of us.

We can look at Russia and see just how hard it is for a society to
free itself of these sorts of institutions.  How much of the Russian
"Mafia" is composed of fragments of the KGB?  This story can be read
again and again throughout history.

What is different in 1997 is that the technology of mass surveillance
and population management is superior.  What is at stake is whether we
remain a free people or whether we end up with ear tags like cattle.

Monty Cantsin
Editor in Chief
Smile Magazine
http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html
http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.html

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Anonymous, signing as Monty Cantsin, Editor in Chief of Smile Magazine
quotes my Cypherpunks summary's quote of Eric Hughes:
>Martin Minow wrote:
>> EH: Why do the Fed's want access to plaintext? The motivation has
>> not been made clear. Policy goals are stated in technological terms,
>> not in policy terms.
>
>Perhaps we can elaborate on this.  Judging from their actions, what
>they want is a full blown police state.  They've seen the product, now
>they want one of their own.  This is obvious to everybody on this
>list, but sometimes people are coy about it, probably in an effort to
>appear to be "legitimate".
>

Sorry, it isn't obvious to me. The most paranoid I can work myself
up to is to assume that some (not all) of our leaders want to restore
their half-remembered 1950's Dick-and-Jane, big car, Eisenhauer suburbian
childhood; and are afraid that letting absolute privacy loose will
be the end-of-civilization-as-we-know-it. This parallels the battles
that were waged in the early 1960's, as the civil rights movement
(and the Pill) shattered the myth of suburbia. The police and FBI
felt, quite sincerely, that they were in the midst of a revolution
and had to take "necessary measures" to save America.

The new cryptography makes the Internet safe for child pornographers,
for revolutionaries, for criminals, as well as for human rights
workers, for religious missionaries in unfriendly countries, and
multinational corporations. The message I read from the attempt
to criminalize strong cryptography is that the risk of damage
from the pornographers (etc.) is so great that we must restrict
cryptography and trust the national leadership to respect the
rights of the good guys. Unfortunately, one country's human
rights worker is another country's dangerous revolutionary.

Remember, the Martin Luther King who was thrown in jail in Alabama
in the early 1960's was the same Martin Luther Kings who received
the Nobel Peace Prize a few years later, and who was killed for
his revolutionary activities just a few years after that. Whether
he was a hero or villian depends on who writes the history book
and it is, ultimately, our responsibility to make sure that many,
conflicting, history books can be written.

Martin Minow
minow@apple.com

At 6:54 PM -0700 9/14/97, Martin Minow wrote:
>Remember, the Martin Luther King who was thrown in jail in Alabama
>in the early 1960's was the same Martin Luther Kings who received
>the Nobel Peace Prize a few years later, and who was killed for
>his revolutionary activities just a few years after that. Whether
>he was a hero or villian depends on who writes the history book
>and it is, ultimately, our responsibility to make sure that many,
>conflicting, history books can be written.

Most particularly remember that the director-for-life of the FBI used
telephone intercepts in an attempt to get this Martin Luther King to commit
suicide.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
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frantz@netcom.com | from hostile governments.  | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

On 14 Sep 97 at 18:54, Martin Minow wrote:

> Anonymous, signing as Monty Cantsin, [wrote]:

> >Perhaps we can elaborate on this.  Judging from their actions, what
> >they want is a full blown police state.  They've seen the product, now
> >they want one of their own.  This is obvious to everybody on this
> >list, but sometimes people are coy about it, probably in an effort to
> >appear to be "legitimate".

> Sorry, it isn't obvious to me. The most paranoid I can work myself
> up to is to assume that some (not all) of our leaders want to restore
> their half-remembered 1950's Dick-and-Jane, big car, Eisenhauer suburbian
> childhood...

And I think that a tremendous obstacle here is a fairly widespread 
and definitely human tendency to ascribe innocent or misguided 
motivation to what are, objectively, consummately *evil* deeds. 
Those are not bumpkins up there in Congress. Some may question their 
IQs but of those congresscritters are crafty lawyers. The few who 
aren't lawyers are just crafty. That's how they got there and 
that's how they build their power and wealth bases once there, in 
jobs that don't pay enough to make any honest person rich.

> The new cryptography makes the Internet safe for child pornographers,
> for revolutionaries, for criminals, 

Virtually any resource one could name could be similarly demonized, 
as the beleaguered gun owners well know. Criminals enjoy safe and 
comfortable transportation by car, bus, train and jetliner. They 
sustain their mortal coils with food. They breathe air. Anything 
that is commonly used or useful can be said to nurture, further, 
encourage or protect the criminal element.  

The logical response is, "So what?"  

The emotional, PR knee-jerk reaction of a public only superficially
involved with anything outside the confines of their complicated
little sitcom-and-sports lives is to nod in robotic agreement and
sit still while breathing permits are passed into law, to be revoked
only when one of those nasty, awful bad guys uses air in furtherance 
of a political crime. By the time breathing permits are routinely 
revoked for expired car tags Joe Lunchbucket is in way over his head.

This stuff is serious. This pattern is not new -- it is just new
*here*, a development of the last 20 years. Similar slippery slopes
have been traveled in other countries, in other times. These times
are getting way too interesting for comfort. 

TJ

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