Bob: After spending a lot of time following the mail recently, I informed a friend (a prominent economist with a major firm that manages money and investments for governments and the like) about the latest goings on in the U.S. government's attempt to essentially ban privacy. He came up with a new twist that I thought might be interesting to many. Editorial note: Jay is not a cryptographer, so by "unbreakable" I think he should mean breakable only with extreme difficulty (i.e. its not worth the effort)) without the key(s). I have encapsulated the term in quotes. .....MRL. PROPOSED BAN ON "UNBREAKABLE" DATA ENCRYPTION ITS NOT JUST YOUR PRIVACY THAT IS AT STAKE: IT COULD BE YOUR LIFE! The Federal government wants to make it unlawful for anyone in the US to use any form of data encryption, to which a key has not been provided to the Federal government. In effect, the proposed laws outlaw privacy. Government officials claim there is no communication which they should not be able to read. Government officials claim they need this power so they can catch criminals, terrorists and spies. Key questions that must be asked of those who support giving government officials this extraordinary power: Why should the doings of criminals set the standard of behavior to be applied to the vast majority of Americans, who are law-abiding? Do government officials expect criminals to obey this law? Do government officials have any data series which show the number of cases in which intercepted data/telephone communications were the only evidence available for use against the accused? "Unbreakable" encryption can save your life. Most of us have records in all sorts of databases, for all kinds of good reasons (tax records, payroll records, medical records, military service records, credit card usage, car rentals, etc.). The advent of cheap computing power makes it possible for these databases to be linked, so that a quite complete picture of each American can quickly be assembled. These data can be potentially lethal. For example, if an abused woman has fled to a distant part of the country, these data can be searched with relative ease by her abuser, if he has the requisite computer skills. With "unbreakable" encryption, his efforts will be blocked. Rather than banning "unbreakable" encryption, Federal law should mandate it for key personal databases, of the type listed above. At an extreme, your personal data could be used to target you for genocide. In most European countries, citizens must carry national identity cards, a form of internal passport. When one moves to a new town, one must register with the police there. Those who have watched movies depicting World War II in Europe perhaps recall Gestapo agents stopping persons on the streets and demanding to see their "papers". Police officers in Europe can still demand to see national identity cards when they wish to do so: minorities are often targeted. We do not have "national identity" cards here in America. Yet. But the various databases, if linked, could formal a virtual "national identity" card. Thus, if as future administration decided it wanted to target a certain group of Americans, as was the case with Japanese-Americans during World War II, those databases could become a virtual death warrant for those in the target group. Rather than supporting a ban on "unbreakable" encryption, every American should demand that Congress require key databases be "unbreakably" encrypted, and that severe punishments should be meted out to those who refuse to "unbreakably" encrypt such databases. The Federal governments argument that a ban on "unbreakable" encryption will cripple its efforts to protect us against criminals overlooks a key fact. The biggest criminals in this century have not been common or organized criminals. The biggest murderers in this century have been officials of governments "gone bad". In eight major genocides between 1915 and 1994, 57 million were murdered, including millions of children. In the Nazi genocide alone, 13 million were murdered in 13 years. It would take Europes common criminals about 400 years to murder so many, if Americas peak murder rate in the past 20 years (10.2/100K in 1980) were applied to Europe. Plenty can be done to curb violent criminals. But asking us to accept a ban on "unbreakable" encryption is asking us to commit suicide for fear of death. Call your Congress member and demand they vote against the ban on "unbreakable" encryption. The life you save may be your own, or those of your spouse, children and grand-children. Jay Edward Simkin, Research Director, JPFO (Milwaukee, WI) Ed. note: This is not his real job.