On 14 Sep 97 at 0:00, Vin McLellan wrote:
Hmmm. Isn't it time for a reality check? Getting bent out of shape because the House Intelligence Community -- surely the legislators closest to the spooks and spies of the Permanent Government, and rather addicted to its product -- votes to outlaw cryptography without a backdoor seems to be excessive.
I disagree. "They" instinctively perceive that they have a PR climate in which they have successfully elevated the Horsemen to deities that no politician who values his reelection will challenge. The whole situation has been engineered, in part for this moment. They will do it this session if they can, otherwise next session. If you haven't noticed, we are well down on the slippery slope of acceptance of unconstitutional legislation and executive acts. With the substitution of outrageously unconstutional language for the original text of SAFE, the slope has just steepened dramatically and the edge above is pretty well out of reach. The problem is that no constitution has the power to enforce itself. It depends entirely on a wide, usually mostly unstated agreement that its principles are Very Important Things. Liberia, you may recall, copied the U.S. Constitution almost to the word, and it did them no good whatsoever because the people were not imbued with the spirit of the document. It's quite remarkable that any semblance of our Constitution has lasted as long as it has, but it's pretty obvious that the general understanding and agreement that holds such things in place has passed below critical mass in the U.S. The government is now moving into "anything goes" mode. That's when the slope becomes nearly vertical.
Declan or someone who tracks Congressional voting trends should double-check me, but I harbor doubt that the US Congress (or rather, the House of Represenatives) is about to vote and approve such a bill.
Some thought the same of the CDA. In a few years more some will be saying the same of some death camp bill. It's all relative, and the relative window in this step-wise game of incremental slavery is quite narrow these days.
This Nation, and the rights of citizenship the state conceeds, were not defined and enumberated in terms of what will make police oversight and investigation most cost-effective.
Right, but it's illustrative of the problem that one writes, "and the rights of citizenship the state concedes," because this nation was founded on no such basis. The state conceded nothing because the state was considered to have no natural powers, unlike the contemporary view in the rest of the world then, and for the most part, now. Both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution make it pretty clear that the foundation for the U.S. government is the delegation of powers from individuals endowed with natural rights. Most of the rest of the world still functions on the model of a soveriegn state which graciously grants rights to its citizen-units and can withdraw them by the same power. It's a fundamental differenc that few people outside the U.S. even contemplate. Also, as has been suggested in another post, this is about *money*, not national security. Or it's about *power*. Or *money* as the lifeblood of *state power*. I doubt there is a politician or bureaucrat above the level of Mayberry who actually fears *any* of the Horsemen. On the contrary, the Horsemen are the statists' best friends. Without the hyped dangers there would be little excuse for the stepwise evisceration of the Constitution and the construction of the most technologically advanced police state in the history of mankind. This latest assault on the Constitution was inevitable. Only the timing may have been affected by pro-crypto legislative efforts. Major grabs of power are almost always preceded by a period of softening up by PR bombardment, exactly what we've been seeing for the last couple of years. Any time you see a concerted PR campaign to demonize something it's a lead pipe cinch that it will culminate in a move to grab power. Trace things back to the beginning of the PR campaign and that's the point in time when the ultimate objective was already in the sights of the movers and shakers behind the campaign. TJ