- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: RICO - (Was: Group order for Secret Power)
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:43 PM 11/7/96 -0500, Black Unicorn wrote: > >I cover RICO because it's a popular prosecution tool, "popular"? Well, only in a rather stilted point of view! > because it is >the predominate vehicle for seizure and forfeiture in federal cases >(of which remailer and encryption issues are likely to arouse) and >because it represents a codification of the approach most courts take >when dealing with seizure cases. In a very real way, RICO represents >the outer extremes of seizure cases in the United States, and is >probably, given the complexity of many state laws, the simplest way >to "grab" something. It also has civil provisions which make >"private prosecutors" out of you and me. But the odd thing is, the one entity we can't seem to attack using RICO is the Federal government, and probably most other governments levels. Looked at purely objectively, it should be easy to demonstrate that the Federal government (and its representatives) have engaged in plenty of crime as a pattern of activity, and certainly enough to rise to the level of the standards of RICO. (It takes only a few instances of such crime satisfy the standards of RICO.) Change the name "Federal Government" to "Organization X," and describe what it's done, and all the evidence will point to a clear pattern of crime. Now, okay, it may seem presumptuous of me to even dream of the possibility of using RICO against the thugs who wrote it. But this country (USA) is SUPPOSED to be under the rule of law, not men, and there is no reason (other than, sadly, pessimism or a-priori realism) to conclude that the government can't be punished when it breaks its own rules. Such punishment could come by way of mechanisms such as the OKC bombing, or the far more selective system Assassination Politics (AP). Take your choice. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:08 PM 11/7/1996, Timothy C. May wrote: >At 2:38 PM -0800 11/7/96, Peter Hendrickson wrote: > >> If you can get a life prison term for your strong crypto you may >> hesitate to use it. If not, then you may get to be an example >> for everybody else. > Well, this is what in private e-mail to Peter I was referring to when I > said "only a police state" could pull the plug on free speech and strong > crypto once it was ubiquitously deployed. While the term "police state" is not well defined, I do not believe it applies to what I am describing. (There is a risk that it could develop, however.) Laws forbidding the use of cryptography have ominous free speech implications as we would be attempting to outlaw concealed meaning. Concealed meaning can be pretty well concealed and that makes for difficult and dangerous legal questions. On the other hand, the action of running a program which uses forbidden crypto systems is pretty unambiguous and could be effectively isolated from other kinds of speech. Many kinds of speech are already illegal. For instance, I am not allowed to copy somebody else's speech because it would violate copyright laws. I am not allowed to break verbal contracts. In essence, I am punished later for the something I said if I am forced to keep my word. But, this does not constitute a police state. What I am proposing would not require an end to fair trials or warrants or really any other legal customs we have. In case anybody has any doubts, and I doubt Tim does, the existence of a life sentence does not imply the presence of a police state. > Throwing people in prison for life for using crypto is something that is > certainly _possible_, though I rather doubt taxpayers will be keen on > paying for this. Simply executing those who use random numbers makes more > sense. The taxpayers will be happy to pay to keep a small number of criminals in jail if it keeps the rest of us fairly safe within our homes and on the streets. > All implausible, of course. > By the way, I've never claimed that I know crypto anarchy is irreversible, > I just think it is. I've presented some plausibility arguments on why I > think this is so, drawing parallels to other developments in history, but > logical proofs and predictions about the future don't usually go together > very well. Actually, I agree with Tim. I think the deployment of strong cryptography will be irreversible. But, it will be irreversible because the bad aspects of it won't be all that bad and in general it will be a very positive development. The reason it must be stopped now is to stop the voters from discovering this. (Certainly we have seen a strong anti-democratic sentiment among the proponents of GAK, when they propose that we cannot even be allowed to hear the scenarios which should concern us, the ultimate repository of political legitimacy in the United States.) A good comparison can be made to the recreational drug situation. Many people, probably a majority of people, believe that they should be allowed to take whatever drugs they like and many do. Efforts have been made to forbid it, but they are almost universally unsuccessful because of the tremendous popular support for recreational drug use. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:12 PM 11/7/1996, jim bell wrote: >At 12:22 PM 11/7/96 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote: >>It appears to be widely believed that cryptoanarchy is irreversible. >>Everybody believes that the race to deploy or forbid strong cryptography >>will define the outcome for a long time. >> I can't think of a reason why this should be so. >> If the wide use of strong cryptography results in widely unpopular >> activities such as sarin attacks and political assassinations, it >> would not be all that hard to forbid it, even after deployment. > Simple analogy: Suppose you put two people into a room with a deck of > playing cards and a table, instructing "Person A" to build a house-of-cards, > and telling "Person B" to stop him from achieving his goal. Who do you > think will win? Obviously, the latter will win: It's vastly easier to > knock such a structure down than to build it in the first place, and all > "Person B" has to do is occasionally take a whack at the structure. > BTW, some of your confusion is probably based is the false assumptions in > your last sentence above. "..wide use of strong cryptography results in > widely unpopular activities such as sarin attacks and political > assassinations." No, you're confused, but it's probably my fault. We don't really know what cryptoanarchy will be like. We all have ideas about it. Some we share and some we don't. But we won't really know until we see it happen. My whole point is based on the proposition that the doomsayers are right. I believe D. Denning has suggested that cryptoanarchy will result in the breakdown of our society. The implication is that we must stop this from happening. What I am saying is that we can wait and see before going into a panic. If it turns out to be bad - and I mean Assassination Politics, by the way - it is reasonable to assume that broad popular support for the suppression of strong cryptography will result. Even most cypherpunks would support and participate in such policies if it appeared to be necessary. Broad popular support means that it will be possible to roll back cryptoanarchy. That means we don't need to do anything hasty now. The people who want to do some hasty should be called upon to justify their beliefs. To date I don't believe they have done so. It might be a good idea to reread the first sentence of the last paragraph. I am not repeat not endorsing the Four Horsemen scenario. > First, I contend that the unpopularity of political assassinations is based > far less on their presumed undesirability, and much more so on the fact that > the average citizen (currently) has no input on who is being killed. He > might well suppose that the killings are trying to deny him the little power > and influence he has in the political system. ("They shot [fill in the > blank}! I voted for him!") But what if assassination was made far more > accessible to the common man? Suppose, say, the approval of one million > citizens was the only thing necessary to have an assassination legally > accomplished? Or, more likely in practice, the vote of a million citizens > was interpreted as a kind of terminal veto over that particular politician > or government employee, who would have to resign or face the (lethal) > consquences! In that case, assassinations wouldn't be seen as bad, they'd > be the natural consequence of a politician who overstays his welcome and > ignores numerous warnings. It is my opinion that your bloodthirsty dreams have done a great deal to discredit cryptoanarchy. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:48 PM 11/7/1996, Jim McCoy wrote: > Peter Hendrickson writes: >> If mandatory GAK were imposed, reviewing messages is easy, even with >> inter-agency fighting. Or, encryption in general could just be >> forbidden if GAK created too much hassle. > Encryption itself will never be forbidden because there is far too much > money riding on electronic commerce. I think this is true. Good computer security, including encryption, is clearly important to the financial well being of the country. If we consider that to be a national security issue, then we have to ask why the national security apparatus is attempting to undermine our security. > An administration which tried to outlaw all encryption would soon find > itself on the next train out of D.C. after the next election cycle. But if the doomsayers are right, this would not be the case. Most people will be willing to give up some Internet commerce if they believe it is necessary to protect their children and maybe their society. That is not even an unreasonable point of view. >> In practice I suspect that good stego is hard. > You are mistaken. Read Disappearing Cryptography to see just how easy > it is, then check out Romana Machado's EzStego program (done in Java so > it can be added to any web download with a bit of tweaking.) If the > penalty for using bad stego is high enough you can be certain that natural > selection will make certain that eventually the programs being used are > top notch code :) I may be mistaken. I have added "Disappearing Cryptography" to my list. Still, my intuition says that it is quite hard to do stegonography for many years and never tip your hand even once. >> You don't have to be right every time when you look for it, just some >> of the time.... > The problem is that you need to be able to prove that stego is in use, and > this is a much more difficult task than you suggest. But you really don't need to prove it. You just have to convince a judge to issue a warrant for you to get the real evidence. If you have to, you'll train a dog to sniff stego. (That was a joke by the way. ;-) >> You might also identify suspects in other ways. Maybe that Jim McCoy >> is looking a little too successful or perhaps he made an unwise comment >> to a "friend" who reported him. That could easily be grounds for a >> warrant and subsequent change of quarters. > Get a warrant, search my system, find nothing but a bunch of applications > and a collection of risque (but definitely legal) pictures which I exchange > with a few friends. You may suspect that when the images are concatenated > in a particular way the low-order bits form a stego filesystem but no one > will be able to prove it in court. Are you concatenating these images by hand? If so, the level of entropy is probably low enough to recover the information through brute force methods or you are hiding a very small amount of information. If you are not doing it by hand, you own terrorist software and will pay the price. And, by the way, who are these friends? Can any of them finger you in exchange for a reduced sentence? Incidentally, I hope nobody on this list believes they will be able to practice cryptoanarchy in my scenario. You are already suspects. >> Which technicalities protected the Japanese-Americans during World War II? > Few. OTOH the interment of Japanese-Americans occurred during a period of > war, at a time when civil liberties were much more limited, and when > Asian-Americans were second-class citizens with very little political power > (that and the Korematsu decision was a complete piece of crap...) In the Four Horsemen scenario, where people are being murdered all the time and the society is in a turmoil, popular support for the suppression of strong cryptography would be easy to arrange. > Today most US citizens distrust the US governement, civil liberties and > protections are fairly well established in law and legal precedence, and > we techno-nerds are actually the ones running the country :) In the Four Horsemen scenario, it is likely that most engineers would be delighted to help put things to rights. >> The legal system would have to be stretched considerably less to outlaw >> strong crypto and make it stick. > It would have to be shattered to make such a ban stick. Times have changed > quite significantly since the 40s, and free speech rights and the first > amendment have become rather important to our information society. This is correct. But these views would be change if we were facing a terrible situation. It isn't even clear that you would have to tamper with free speech rights all that much to suppress strong cryptography. There would be a dramatic political risk that all rights would disappear later, but after somebody you know gets killed anonymously, you might be willing to chance it. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Judge Patel Background
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim McCoy pointed me to an interesting book called "The Courage of Their Convictions" by Peter Irons. It just happens to reference Judge Patel. Fred Korematsu was a Japanese-American shipyard worker in the early 1940s. His fiancee was Caucasian. To stay with her, he evaded the concentration camps for two months, but was caught and convicted anyway. His conviction was not reversed until 1983 in the court of one Judge Patel. Page 48, "After hearing lawyers on both sides, Judge Marilyn Patel asked Fred Korematsu to address the court. `As long as my record stands in federal court,' he quietly stated, `any American citizen can be held in prison or concentration camps without a trial or hearing.' Ruling from the bench, Judge Patel labeled the government's position as `tantamount to a confession of error' and erased Fred's conviction from the court's records." (Judge Patel is presiding over Dan Bernstein's challenge to the ITAR.) (Full reference: Irons, Peter "The Courage of Their Convictions: Sixteen Americans Who Fought Their Way to the Supreme Court" New York: Penguin Books, 1990 ISBN 0 14 01.2810 7) Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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exclusion/censorship and the law
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:27 PM 11/6/96 -0600, Jim Choate wrote: >There is one important legal aspect which the operator of the Cypherpunks >mailing list has opened themselves up for with this action. In short they >have now opened themselves up for defamation and liable suites by imposing >an editorial policy on the contents of this list (1). > >This opens up the potential, for example, for Tim May to sue the operator of >the Cypherpunks mailing list now for posts from users (even anonymous ones) >which defame or otherwise liable his character, reputation, or ability to >pursue income in his chosen field. In short the operators of the list >becomes publishers and distributors of the material. It is the legal >difference between a bookstore and a book publisher. I don't pretend to have spent much attention on defamation, but the cases I've seen don't go nearly this far. The two that come to mind are _Cubby v. Compuserve_ 776 F. Supp. 135 (1991), and _Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy_ (sorry, no cite at hand). _Cubby_ said that service providers were liable *only when they had knowledge of the defamation*. Since the list is set up (as far as I know) to forward messages (regardless of source) to the subscribers without further editorial review, _Cubby_ suggests no liability here. _Stratton Oakmont_ went the other direction (finding potential liability for defendant service provider, on a motion for preliminary injunction? can't remember) but has been widely criticized; that ruling never faced any extended scrutiny because the parties settled. Also, Prodigy, the defendant in Stratton Oakmont, exercised much greater editorial control over postings on that service, and had the ability to remove postings, which is something John Gilmore can't do. So my impression is that you've got the tail end of a useful concept (ability to control is frequently a factor used to determine liability) but are making far too much out of it. One really big difference I see here is that editorial control of the Cpunks list has occurred once (in 4? 5? years of the list's existence), is on a per-person not a per-message basis, and *does not function to restrict who can send messages but only limits Vulis' ability to _receive_ them on his usual system(s)*. You might take a look at Mike Godwin's article on net defamation at <http://www.eff.org/pub/Legal/net_libel_godwin.article>; by now it's a little old, but I don't think anything's happened since which would change its reasoning. >Censorship is censorship, irrespective of the source of the limitation. >Free expression is impossible in an environment of censorship. The problem with absolute statements like this is that they ignore important distinctions about scale - e.g., I think that it's very important that people, generally, be free to discuss whatever they want in private homes. But I also think it's very important that I be able to tell other people that they're not willing to discuss whatever they want in *my* home. Not because I'm especially excited about censorship, but because I enjoy my privacy and my peace & quiet. So on the level of national rights, yes, unrestricted speech is an excellent thing. But on the level of my living room, unrestricted speech is a very bad thing. I don't think anyone who is arguing that it's fine to throw Vulis off the list would make the argument that it would be acceptable for the government to throw Vulis off of the Internet. The closest thing I can see to a First Amendment argument against Gilmore is the "company town" argument, that the list is so much like a city or town that it ought to be subject to the restrictions that the First Amendment puts on municipalities and traditional public forums - but even this (rather far-out) argument got shot down a few days ago when our beloved Wallace of CyberPromo tried it in _Cyber Promotions v. America Online_. The judge said "no way", and I think that argument's a lot more plausible against American Online than against John Gilmore. >I have argued in the past that this list is a defacto public list because of >the way it is advertised and to the extent it is advertised. All the protests >by the operator to the contrary will not convince a court. I don't think this makes any sense. "Public list" has no special meaning. My impression is that you're trying to make an analogy to public places which are privately owned like motels and lunch counters and amusement parks, where the owners (despite being private actors) cannot discriminate on the basis of race, gender, national origin, etc. (See, e.g., Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 USC 1981 et seq) But I don't think there's any especially credible allegation that Vulis was discriminated against on the basis of protected class membership; nor is it clear that the Civil Rights Act can be extended to the operation of mailing lists. (Can someone shed some light on this? I've spent some time reading civil rights cases and can't remember one which gets even close. But I hate to say "can't be done" on the basis of failing to remember a case where it has been done.) My hunch is that (especially with this Supreme Court) the First Amendment's right to speak and assemble freely would trump Congress' attempt (pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment, Section V) to regulate the distribution of speech. If there's no prohibited discrimination (either because there's no prohibition, or there was no "discrimination" within the terms of the statute) then I don't see a cause of action. Wanting something you're not getting isn't enough. Owners of "public places" like malls or stores or restaurants are still free to exclude some people for non-prohibited reasons (like not meeting the dress code, or having behaved poorly in the past). And Vulis' behavior is certainly enough to suggest that his exclusion from the list (which has not impaired his ability to speak to the list) was neither arbitrary nor wrongly discriminatory. So I really don't think that a civil rights-flavored argument even gets to first base here. I am pretty disappointed to see that none of the people who profess to be shocked and wounded at Vulis' exclusion have bothered to set up your own lists. In my mind, whatever moral outrage you claim to have looks awfully small compared to the relatively small burden of doing something about what you say is bothering you. Someone said that saying "start your own list" is like saying "well, go start your own country"; but the difference is that you can only live in one place at a time, so starting your own country on some faraway island means severing personal and professional ties in the place that you live now, abandoning the countryside you've come to know and love, etc. But there's no reason that you can't start your own mailing list and stay on cypherpunks. As I pointed out a few days ago, you can even subscribe your list to the cypherpunks list, so that your list is "cypherpunks++". I think there are some copyright issues lurking here, but there are at least two filtered cypherpunks lists running, as well as Bob Hettinga's e-$pam list, which make use of cpunks traffic, and I'm not aware that any of those folks have attracted suits for their reproduction of list traffic. So I don't see any big obstacle to one or more people fixing what they say is a big problem. So I'm left to wonder if this really isn't the big deal people seem to enjoy making it into, or if it's a big deal, but free speech and lack of censorship is worth less than some time and/or some money to these folks. I think that "cypherpunks write code" can/should be understood as a question, e.g., "what are you doing to change the things that bother you?" -- Greg Broiles | "In this court, appellant and respondent are the gbroiles(a)netbox.com | same person. Each party has filed a brief." http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Lodi v. Lodi, 173 Cal.App.3d 628, 219 Cal. | Rptr. 116 (3rd Dist, 1985)

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:55 PM 11/7/1996, Timothy C. May wrote: > "Truly noisy sources" are not at all unusual. Actually, the hard part is > ever proving a source is _not_ noisy. (There are deep issues involving > randomness here, and I usually go into the work of Kolmogorov, Chaitin, and > others at this point. Consult the archives, or see a book on information > theory.) Truly, I am out of my depth. But, I will plunge ahead nonetheless. I think it is hard to show that a source is noise. Using only the signal itself, I believe it is impossible. That means there may be patterns which you cannot prove do not exist. That is surely less than ideal, especially if you are betting your life on it. And there are all sorts of ways you can blow your cover. Maybe your traffic patterns are sort of odd. Maybe you are up at odd hours. The weakness is stego does not have to be great before you are put on the suspect list. If cryptoanarchy is unpopular, you are in big trouble because the government can afford to watch you intensively. > The legal issue is this: can we pass laws and have them upheld by the > courts which impose severe penalties on people for the supposed crime of > having in their possession sequences of numbers which cannot be converted > to meaningful English sentences? I maintain that the Constitution says we > cannot. Of course, if the Constitution is thrown out, then the old > Cypherpunk joke may come into play: "Use a random number, go to jail." (An > Eric Hughes quote, from 1992-3.) What Tim May maintains may be more reasonable that what the Supreme Court maintains. But it's the Supreme Court that will rule. We have laws which state, in essence, that certain large numbers cannot be copied legally if they are related to copyrighted executables. >> In the model I am positing, there would be broad popular support for >> such policies. > I think you are assuming a lot. I think I am, too. I don't subscribe to the Four Horsemen scenario. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Any additional information on Kata, TX. decision??
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sombody posted some information about Child Protective Services interrogating children without parental permission, etc and the decision that followed being upheld in favor of the state. would you be so kind as to provide the entire available clip or a URL.

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criminalizing crypto use
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:43 PM 11/7/96 -0800, Tim May wrote: >* Intent. It's hard to imagine someone being imprisoned for using >cryptography, except perhaps in wartime conditions. I may be wrong. Also, >there are deep Constitutional issues we haven't been much discussing. One change I suspect we'll see sooner or later on the Federal side is an amendment of the Sentencing Guidelines to include an upward adjustment for the use of encryption to frustrate law enforcement efforts. This wouldn't be a conviction for using crypto, but would result in harsher penalties for people convicted of other crimes where they happened to use crypto in a way connected with the crime. (Keeping child porn or records of a forbidden business on an encrypted disk volume, using PGPfone to conspire across long distances, etc.) As an example, less than a year ago, Congress directed the Sentencing Commission (a sub-branch of the federal Judiciary) to amend the guidelines to enhance the penalties by at least two levels for using a computer to advertise or "ship" a visual depiction of child porn. Pub. L. 104-71, Sec. 2 (12/23/95). Sentences for felony and some misdemeanor convictions in Federal court are usually based upon a payoff matrix, where a crime is assigned a "base offense level" (higher levels indicate more serious crimes), which is then adjusted upwards for aggravating factors (like the use of a gun, or an elderly victim, or prior convictions) and mitigating factors (like admission of responsibility or cooperating with law enforcement) to arrive at a final score, which indicates a relatively narrow range of potential sentences. Adding an enhancement for crypto use seems like an easy way for legislators to "get tough on crypto" while avoiding Constitutional issues. (It also strikes me as pointless; I have yet to run across anyone who doesn't work in criminal law (or isn't in a federal pen) who seems to have any idea that the sentencing guidelines exist, much less take them into account when planning crimes. They're pretty complex.) I feel a little wary about saying this because I haven't heard anyone mention it before. I have no secret insider knowledge. But I think a step like this is probably transparent to the folks in the Justice Dept who work on computer crime and crypto stuff, so I'm probably not giving anyone any ideas. I hope not. Federal court is tough enough for defendants already. Folks who want to know more about the Sentencing Guidelines might take a look at <http://www.ussc.gov>. They've done a nice job of putting everything on the web, so you can scratch your head in puzzlement at home, instead of at the law library. Many states also use a similar system for sentencing in criminal cases, but they may not be crypto-savvy enough to think of adding extra penalties for crypto use. -- Greg Broiles | "In this court, appellant and respondent are the gbroiles(a)netbox.com | same person. Each party has filed a brief." http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Lodi v. Lodi, 173 Cal.App.3d 628, 219 Cal. | Rptr. 116 (3rd Dist, 1985)

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:52 PM 11/7/1996, Huge Cajones Remailer wrote: > Look around at all the laws in a community that are unenforceable and > largely ignored by significant sections of the community. Taxes are a > classic with many people receiving cash and not declaring it..I suppose > you could say they just opt not to pay taxes while law abiders (to varying > degrees) opt in to pay tax. I agree. It would be necessary to marshal widespread public support to eliminate strong crypto. If the Four Horsemen scenario is available, this support would be available. > It is estimated here where all dogs, for example, are required to be > registered, that only 40 percent are in fact registered (ie pay the dog > tax). The authorities simply do not, with their current technology, have > the ability or political will to break down everyone's front door and > complete house to house dog searches then deal with court cases and bring > eveidence as to the actual owner of the animal where this is a relevant > matter to be proved. Sure, it's not really worth the effort. How much effort will you go to prevent your children from being kidnapped? > Consider the difficulty of actually outlawing say PGP and making it > stick. To ban its use on a network compliance measures such as routine > traffic scanning would be implimented. So users may say resort to direct > modem to modem systems thus forcing authorities to routinely tap > telephone calls, identify modem calls, and analyse these calls. The > authorities start to use scarce resources provided by those members of > the public that choose to pay taxes to them. In the case of a largely compliant public, this isn't all that expensive. > The authorities have to spend even more resources on publicity and scams > to align privacy advocates with terrorists. Some privacy advocates may > even become terrorists who before didn't really care for such tactics. This is a highly likely scenario. But in the scenarios proposed by the GAKers, even the privacy advocates would be reluctant to defend crypto. > Assume the snail mail route is effectively sqaushed what then? Well you > could voice call your friend and read the encyphered text to them over > the phone and they could then run it through pgp and decrypt it. If the > authorities effectively made this too costly (in terms of risk etc) then > you could always just jump on a plane and tell them the message > personally or send someone else to do that for you. Gee, I hope you don't have to send many messages if you have to travel across the country to deliver them. How will you operate an anonymous business this way? It doesn't sound like cryptoanarchy to mean. > The costs of compliance increase as the authorities take measures to put > the genie back in the bottle. Stealth versions of popular programs get > released, and further technological advances are made so that the problem > becomes greater with respect to compliance as do the costs to the > taxpayer of ensuring compliance. Encrypted data that cannot be easily > distinguished form noise would require routine analysis and attempted > cracking of every bit of data transmitted..a task that would soon bring > even the great US economy to its knees assuming the people didn't put a > stop to the madness before it reached that point. I think people probably would put a stop to the madness. But, under the Four Horsemen scenario, most people, even Mr. Huge Cajones Remailer, would not consider it to be madness. > Just as an aside, I am sure the various spook angencies in the 'free > world' are well aware of these issues and no doubt other issues I have > not imagined and such considerations have played a part in so far stalling > an outright ban on the use of effective encryption programs and devices. This is interesting. I would be quite interested to see real evidence that various spook agencies have been foot dragging on the GAKers plans. > There are always costs to a government in the reduction in freedoms, and > the ultimate cost to any particular government is that it may stir the > beast so much that it awakens and takes away that governments authority > whether by democratic means or otherwise. Yes, this is correct. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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