-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote: [..]
there is an infamous case of a child pornographer or pedophile in California that is sometimes cited by law enforcement representatives as a good example of the evils of encryption: supposedly he encrypted his diary and it couldn't be unlocked by them. this was mentioned in the article.
but I have a question: how did they know it was his diary?
If I remember some earlier discussion about that case from a few years ago, the file was called "diary.pgp". What they don't mention is that they were still able to convict him. They were just under the belief that they could figure out who all the victims were they didn't know about from his alleged diary... so they could "help" the other victims or maybe get him ore jail time? Odd thing is he used PGP 1.0, which used Bass-O-Matic.
I've noticed that people tend to often make conceptual leaps like this that are wholly unjustified. it is easy to get their opposition
Yes. This is quite common in political/social discussions and argumentation. A big problem is that people are no longer taught rhetoric and argumentation in schools. Another problem is that it is a clear example the opponents of strong crypto can point to, with lots of emotional strings attached. The best you can do is to note that the case in question was still sucessfully prosecuted, and also to give counter-examples as to why PGP has helped people (cite the usual freedom fighters in Burma, Amnesty International examples, or cite the theft of records from the UN's investigation in Bosnia, noting that it wasn't encrypted....) - --Rob - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBMUDtbSoZzwIn1bdtAQGyLwGAu0nRv276K9cAmJslrl6HwW6m0YHWYKw/ mpZvHynKhfdNLRj6ghaHHH8V2DMDYrLO =SpjH -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----