Was channel surfing last night while MST3K was in a commercial and wound up watching a panel on CSPAN from the World Economic Forum on "Technology & Security". The pannelists were Nicholas Negroponte from MIT's Media Lab, John Barlow from the EFF, a Mike Nelson from the White House (no relation to MST3K's :), and two other people whom I can't for the life of me remember their names (one was from a security consulting firm, and the other was a lawyer from something like the "Bristol Group"). It was 3am, so sue me. :) I missed the first few minutes, but there was a bunch of administration encryption policy bashing from all sides. Nelson kept saying that the administration wanted to support "good strong encryption" and they wanted to be able to say (paraphrasing) "We think this is good. Use this." (Trust us, we're from a TLA. :) He also kept saying that (again, paraphrasing) "most encryption out there is no good". Which begs the question then why are they wanting to ban its use and export. Negroponte kept bringing up the point that their policy was based on the (flawed, as we all believe) assumption that no one outside the US could create good crypto. Other topics that were touched on were intellectual property rights and e$. It was interesting that the lawyer person agreed to a good extent with a lot of the remarks Barlow made. Overall it was pretty interesting (and not just to watch the White House guy squirm as his premises were invalidated out from under him :). CSPAN usually replays stuff like this at odd times during the weekend so you might want to keep your eyes peeled. --- Fletch __`'/| fletch@ain.bls.com "Lisa, in this house we obey the \ o.O' ______ 404 713-0414(w) Laws of Thermodynamics!" H. Simpson =(___)= -| Ack. | 404 315-7264(h) PGP Print: 8D8736A8FC59B2E6 8E675B341E378E43 U ------