My experience with the FBI and other law enforcement officials is that they are honorable people trying to do a very hard job.
Very good point. However, their primary representatives are still Louie Freeh, Jim Kallstom (sp?) and a few others who specialize in technologically-inaccurate hype. They have special backdoor access priviledges to Congress which none of us have (at least on the scale with which they can summon). They do NOT have to answer to anyone, except on warm and fuzzy Congressional hearings during which the technical inaccuracy of their words are rarely challenged. I would give a lot to have a public one-on-one discussion/debate with Freeh or Kallstrom. The problem is that they will stick to the obvious sound bites of "child pornographers" and "terrorists" instead of discussing the technical issues. I do agree that, if Freeh and cypherpunks would stop the hyperbole, and start discussing what would help privacy as well as law enforcement, then much more useful If Freeh and Kallstom played fair, and did not insist on behind-the-scene lobbying for Digital Telephony and GAK, then I might even consider compromising my hard-line stance against GAK and encryption regulation. However, they insisted on pushing it even when they could not get enough public support. Right now, THEY have the power, THEY have the access, THEY do not have to answer to us (and the Devil is always in the details), so I think it is a bit unfair to say that some cypherpunk is being too harsh on the FBI. They (the FBI) are supposed to serve us. Instead, they are taking away our own control of our lives. It reminds me much of the power-hungry MIS suit who swoops in and takes away all of our root passwords without setting up the backups and the firewalls and add to our productivity. We can get some solutions for both sides, but it takes work, and Freeh and Kallstrom (and Clinton) cannot get political credits for these more subtle solutions, so they must choose between highly-visible (but technically wrong) solutions and real (but possibly thankless) solutions. I get the feeling I know what they are choosing right now. Ern