At 01:28 PM 3/11/96 -0500, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
anonymous-remailer@shell.portal.com writes:
This is the second in a regular series of postings to expose cryptographers and cypherpunks who are either lying to us or making a very serious mistake in there judgement.
No, this is the umpteenth stupid anonymous denunciation of people who deserve no such stupidity.
You aren't fit to eat Bruce Schneier or Matt Blaze's toenail clippings. Perry
While I don't really appreciate this guy's style and anonymity any more than you do, it's a misleading argument to try to challenge his position based on (presumably) his crypto expertise or lack of it. I don't doubt Schneier's or Blaze's commanding position in that limited area, but when it comes to the analysis of a bill affecting crypto, knowledge of the technical details of crypto is far less important than knowing how a prosecutor or court will interpret any given law. I'm an "expert" in neither field, but I knew enough to worry. Further, after having read Junger's preliminary analysis, it is blatantly obvious that this bill doesn't constitute much of a step forward, and in fact is likely a retrenchment if the government has its way. The "guarantees" the bill provides aren't really guarantees at all, they are "feel-good" conditional promises, and the whole thing is so shot full of holes that it's hard to imagine that it will provide any protection beyond what we have today. As I noted in my original comment to VTW (Mr. Safdar, who hasn't taken the trouble to contradict, let alone respond to my comments) my biggest fear is that the organizations and people who originally came out in mistaken favor of this bill either won't see their mistake, or won't admit seeing it if they do. (People are funny that way; they hesitate to admit it when they are clearly wrong; organizations are even worse on this score; tiny organizations are worse still, because they must "appear" to be externally consistent yet there are few "heads" to depend on to fix mistakes.) If anything, _MY_ mistake was in believing that the rest of the bill was acceptable if a single bad section was removed; I now believe (after seeing Junger's analysis, and a much more careful reading of the bill) that a serious re-write is mandatory. (In my own defense, I had only skimmed the rest of the bill once, I focussed my criticism on the one "killer" section that I could easily tell would be the most questionable item.) This fiasco does, indeed, raise serious questions about the motivations and credibility of those who have effectively endorsed this bill so soon: It is doubtful whether we will get any accurate picture about the bill from anybody who is afraid of changing his original assessment. I'd be just as willing to listen to "experts" quoted by the people who have (so far) expressed support for this bill. Maybe, as he himself suggests, Junger is a bit too pessimistic. On the other hand, Junger has clearly raised many questions whose answers depend almost completely on the INTENT of people within the government, not the wording of the bill itself. Since I believe their intent to be uniformly bad, it is hard to imagine how anyone could resurrect confidence in this bill to anyone who was similarly pessimistic. And the people who originally claimed that the Administration would oppose this bill as "going too far" cannot now turn around and claim that the government's intent was anything other than bad, BTW. We now see how little good this bill might do, and how much trouble it might allow the Feds to cause, so it's hard to imagine why anyone would have believed the bill (if passed) would not have been signed. I predict that the organizations that have, so far, "endorsed" this bill will quietly stop doing so, but without any kind of specific retraction or apology or explanation. I also believe that they will refuse to reveal whatever legal advice they originally received that induced them to endorse it, because they probably had none. At least Leahy's bill is DOA. However, I think it would be interesting and useful to do a re-write of this bill, addressing all of Junger's concerns, mine as well, and Tim May's to boot. I recommend that we totally ignore comments such as those by Padgett Peterson which claimed that certain provision "must" be included for the bill to pass. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com