Aimee Farr[SMTP:aimee.farr@pobox.com] writes [lots of good rant deleted] The ability to compose one's thoughts through writing, in private, should be an inviolable sanctuary. The law enforcement interest in garnering a passphrase to decrypt for the most heinous of criminal purposes pales in comparison to the importance of forever precluding the government from intruding on the genesis of human achievement at the sacred moment of its inception: taking your thoughts to the written word. [even more good rant deleted]
Aimee, who is somewhat of a newcomer to our list, is groping towards an idea which seems to hold the minds of many contributors; that the contents of our private data are as personal, and should be as inviolate, as the contents of our heads. To those of us to whom the use of computers is as natural as breathing, our data are as much a part of us as our memories, and we instinctively feel they should be just as intimately held. We now use computers as extensions of our minds - a vast store of knowledge, ideas, and abilities. This ability simply did not exist at the time the Constitution was written, and as computers grew out of accounting equipment, their data came to be treated as 'papers' rather than 'memories'. This disjuncture between how we feel about our private data, and how the powers that be treat it, is one basis for a major thread of discussion on cypherpunks and other lists - how one can store one's own personal data in a way which makes it accessible to oneself, and only to oneself. Being forced to turn over one's most intimate thoughts knownlege, and plans, simply because they are outside of one' skull, is a rape of the mind, and a violation of the intent of the Fifth Amendment. Peter Trei