I just heard about the grand jury BS going down around PGP, etc, via the EFF forum on the Well and would like to do whatever I can to support the defense effort (when it comes) etc. I am a writer with some small access to local media and a big interest in the outcome of this test of our 1st amendment rights.
Great! One thing to do would be to do editorials for as many papers as possible. The greatest problem facing "us" (meaning anyone opposing the clipper fiasco), is that the general populace are ignorant, by and large of the following things: 1) what encryption/cryptography is, and why they should care. 2) that any successful attempt to squash public cryptography and replace it with govt. spy-mechanisms sets a really terrible precedent. In following decades we would likely see the removal of more rights and privacy, and the approval of ever more invasive "law enforcement" techniques. 3) what the history of agencies such as NSA and the SS is, and why they are not to be trusted (noting that Treasury controls not only Customs, who are responsible for enforcing many of the laws affecting crypto, but the SS, and BATF, could be of use. We are supposed to trust some unspecified Treasury sub-bureaucracy [not to mention NIST] to hold the keys to our privacy in the right hand, while menacing users of private cryptography via subpoenas and grand juries with the left hand?) 4) that BILLIONS of dollars every year are lost by US businesses to the industrial espionage of foreign competitors, who are under no ITARish restrictions on how they protect what they hold. 5) that the ITAR and the Clipper/Capstone/Clipjack scheme threatens to destroy the US market for cryptographic applications, while this market, with a potential easily in the billions of dollars per year, goes to other nations. With one exception of course: PKP/RSADSI, who have a virtual monopoly on crypto in this country due to patents on algorithms (aka "ownership" of properties of mathematics, "possession" of natural processes of the universe. What next? Will GE get a trademark on sunlight?) Ask the hard question: What is the relationship between PKP/RSA and the US Government? Why is RSA granted these patents? Why does NIST insist on giving exclusive license on DSA encryption to RSA, despite the fact that DSA was developed with YOUR tax money, not the capital of a private business entity? 6) that it is painfully obvious that the "to stop drug dealers, child molesters, and terrorists" rhetoric is a very lame and transparent excuse. Not even a stupid criminal would use crypto that the govt. freely admits was designed with wiretapping in mind. The ONLY way that Clipper could be useful is if all other forms of cryptography that the govt. cannot crack are BANNED outright. Given that it seems clear that the targets are not nebulous Bad Guys (TM), but the US citizenry at large. Lest this sound paranoid, note that even when directly asked, the govt. has yet to deny it is NOT considering banning non-Clipper cryptographic applications. Beyond this, the original proposal hinted strongly that the "key escrow agents" would not be govt. agencies. So much for that. NSA's lackey, NIST, on one hand, and our friends the Treasury on the other. Boy, I sure feel safe, don't you? There's plenty of other issues, but that's a good place to start. As has been adequately hashed out here, there's not much for J. Random Citizen to do about the subpoenas. This does not hold true of the entire Clipper scheme, nor of the NIST/PKP scandal. Make it plain to your readers that crypto is important, and is for them. Make it obvious that they DO have a stake in what is going on right now, and they can play a part.
I would also like to get on your "mailing list" if you have one.
Send a message with "SUBSCRIBE <full name, not email address>" in the BODY of the message to cypherpunks-request@toad.com. -- DISCLAIMER: This message represents only my OWN opinion, not that of EFF. Stanton McCandlish Electronic Frontier Foundation Online Activist mech@eff.org NitV-DataCenter BBS SysOp Fido: <tba> IndraNet: 369:111/1