At 03:22 PM 6/4/96 -0000, nelson@crynwr.com wrote:
The NSA believes that they can and should discard any amount of benefits of crypto in exchange for avoiding any harm of crypto. They are wrong.
I think the truth is even more revealing. We can hypothesize that allowing widespread use of good crypto has many advantages and just a few disadvantages. However, those disadvantages may almost all accrue to government and its employees, and very few to ordinary citizens. This means that talking up the disadvantages of good encryption is doubly fraudulent, because the audience they should be trying to convince (ordinary folks) doesn't realize that the disadvantages generally don't apply to them. And of those few crimes against ordinary citizens where crypto might play a role, that role will almost always be to PREVENT the crime rather than allow it. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com