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Are we men or mice? Re: House panel votes behind closed doors to build in Big Brother (fwd)

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NODE 245547d5Are we men or mice? Re: House panel votes behind closed doors to build in Big Brother (fwd) Declan McCullagh <declan@vorlon.mit.edu>Sat, 13 Sep 1997 05:12:49 +0800

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 14:27:06 -0400
From: "Shabbir J. Safdar" <shabbir@vtw.org>
To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu,
    fight-censorship-announce@vorlorn.mit.edu
Subject: Are we men or mice?  Re: House panel votes behind closed doors to build in Big Brother

At 11:37 PM -0700 9/11/97, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 23:37:39 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
> To: fight-censorship-announce@vorlon.mit.edu
..
> That's why the encryption outlook in Congress is abysmal. Crypto-advocates
> have lost, and lost miserably. A month ago, the debate was about export
> controls. Now the battle is over how strict the //domestic// controls will
> be. It's sad, really, that so many millions of lobbyist-dollars were not
> only wasted, but used to advance legislation that has been morphed into a
> truly awful proposal.

This suggests the battle is over and lost.  It's not, and a tone of this
sort only plays into the FBI's hands.  Feeling like they're on a roll, if
the community throws in the towel now, as your tone above suggests, we cede
defeat and get domestic restrictions.

We have a goddamn right to use encryption without a government backdoor,
and I, and nobody else, should give up until it's dragged from our
rigor-mortis-addled hands.  In Congress, there are still votes left, and we
should be fighting to make sure that no member of Congress that has a vote
at any point in this process should cast that vote without knowing that
their net constituents care about this.  They may not always vote with
their constituents' wishes (and that is frustrating to all of us) but we
certain-as-hell shouldn't let them make that call without having at least
constituent input.

You want to see effectiveness and change, do something constructive instead
of whining on the net.  For example, let people know that by signing up for
the Adopt Your Legislator program at http://www.crypto..com/member/ they
will be notified before and after every vote that their legislator is a
party to, complete with phone and fax nnmbers.

It may look gloomy now, but bad votes should only make us madder and more
determined to lobby Congress.  It's easy to complain about the fact that
you don't like the direction the boat is going; much harder to devote your
energies to actually changing the course.  Pick up an oar and row.

If you get domestic restrictions on encryption and you haven't been calling
your member of Congress on a regular basis to tell them to do the right
thing, you'll get exactly the kind of government you've invested in.

-S

PS I would like this to go to fight-censorship-announce as well, please.

NODE a94b6615Re: Are we men or mice? Re: House panel votes behind closed doors to build in Big Brother (fwd) Ray Arachelian <sunder@brainlink.com>Sat, 13 Sep 1997 07:42:39 +0800

On Fri, 12 Sep 1997, Declan McCullagh wrote:

> We have a goddamn right to use encryption without a government backdoor.

Frankly among certain crowds many backdoors and other bugs have been
detected in most OS's, how will the mother fuckers keep them from being
found and used?  I mean, all you have to do is simply get their attention
and have them snoop on you, meanwhile you watch all the packets and record
the weird ones and you've got a copy of their session.  Yeah, they may use
crypto on the back door, but even so, you now know their formats, and can
also disassemble the code.  When you do, you've got the hole and can
publish it. 

Once you publish the hole and break the program.  Who will have confidence
in that program after it's broken?

After the evil laws, our jobs will be to break ALL GAK'ed software.  How
will they prevent that?  Passing more laws to make the exposure of bugs
and holes illegal?  Sort of like the cell scanner laws? :)

=====================================Kaos=Keraunos=Kybernetos==============
.+.^.+.|  Ray Arachelian    |Prying open my 3rd eye.  So good to see |./|\.
..\|/..|sunder@sundernet.com|you once again. I thought you were      |/\|/\
<--*-->| ------------------ |hiding, and you thought that I had run  |\/|\/
../|\..| "A toast to Odin,  |away chasing the tail of dogma. I opened|.\|/.
.+.v.+.|God of screwdrivers"|my eye and there we were....            |.....
======================= http://www.sundernet.com ==========================

NODE 3191b436Re: Are we men or mice? Re: House panel votes behind closed doors to build in Big Brother (fwd) fnorky@geocities.com (Douglas L. Peterson)Sun, 21 Sep 1997 15:07:56 +0800

On Fri, 12 Sep 1997 19:15:15 -0400 (EDT), you wrote:

>On Fri, 12 Sep 1997, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>
>> We have a goddamn right to use encryption without a government backdoor.
>
>Frankly among certain crowds many backdoors and other bugs have been
>detected in most OS's, how will the mother fuckers keep them from being
>found and used?  I mean, all you have to do is simply get their attention
>and have them snoop on you, meanwhile you watch all the packets and record
>the weird ones and you've got a copy of their session.  Yeah, they may use
>crypto on the back door, but even so, you now know their formats, and can
>also disassemble the code.  When you do, you've got the hole and can
>publish it. 
>
>Once you publish the hole and break the program.  Who will have confidence
>in that program after it's broken?
>
>After the evil laws, our jobs will be to break ALL GAK'ed software.  How
>will they prevent that?  Passing more laws to make the exposure of bugs
>and holes illegal?  Sort of like the cell scanner laws? :)
>

They (the government) has already tried to do this by trying to pass laws that
would make reverse engineering illegal.  I remember reading about a bill in
congress earlier this year that would have done just this.  I don't know the
status of it (I didn't get the bill number).

-Doug
-------------------
Douglas L. Peterson
mailto:fnorky@geocities.com
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/1271/

NODE 131053c5Re: Are we men or mice? Toto <toto@sk.sympatico.ca>Sun, 21 Sep 1997 16:05:12 +0800