On Tue, 24 Jun 1997 tzeruch@ceddec.com wrote:
On Sun, 22 Jun 1997, Robert Hettinga wrote:
You just need to tell them that S909 will kill the commercial internet, and all the billions that have been invested in it.
More to the point, it will kill the commercial internet within the US. We could ban steelmaking for environmental or safety reasons, which would not stop it, but then our steel producers and automakers would be out of business. I think the US may have one, maybe two years before we lose the entire crypto industry to overseas. We may still write the academic articles, but all the software and hardware will be imported. After all the problems about losing jobs, we are actively destroying this sector of high technology.
Not only that, it will open up many (most?) US systems up to being hacked by making effective and usable forms of security either expensive or unworkable. (How much of the free security software is distributed through universities and government agencies? Quite a bit from what I have seen.) S909 will be a disaster no matter how you look at it. It will weaken security for much of the net. I find the idea that this is being done for "National Security" to be frightening. Can they really be that clueless or is something else planned? All this to prosecute (not even really catch) a hand full of kiddy pornographers... "We had to destroy the global village in order to save it." - Sen Kerrey. alano@teleport.com | "Those who are without history are doomed to retype it."