On Thu, 15 May 1997, Adam Back wrote:
Dr Roberts writes:
Perhaps there is a way to turn the training on the trainers? Civil disobediance is the best way to do this. Were a relatively small number of people, a thousand for instance, to post the "RSA in 3 lines" code to the world, it would be highly unlikely that anybody at all would be prosecuted,
Many 1000s of people have exported it.
This was a step in the right direction. The response of the USG has been to pretend it isn't happening. However, if 1000 people announced publically and openly that on a certain date they were all going to post it to this and similar lists, it would have a strong political impact, particularly if followed regularly by longer works of mathematics. Of course, if the "RSA in 3 lines" posting is considered a done deal, it may be time to move on to longer postings. The fact is the USG has been reluctant to make any overt moves. Instead, they have tried to quietly put in "the crypto fix" without making too many waves. Over and over again we have seen their lack of confidence in their ability to get away with making some math illegal. It may be the case that a number of mass postings of mathematics, which anybody can look at and see to be harmless, is all that it will take to finish off the whole ridiculous scheme. Simple ridicule has its value, but what I intend is the use of organized civil disobediance as a political action, and one which is almost impossible for thugs to respond to, particularly in time of peace. The nice thing about this form of civil disobediance is that it occurs on the Net in the most public way so that it will be very difficult for the newspapers to misrepresent what is going on.
Well, it does seem to me at times that people in the US are being too timid about the whole situation. I mean if everyone just openly ignored the stupid laws, you might think they would go away by default, just to catch up with reality.
Ironically, the very people who lay awake at night worrying about whether factoring is hard are the least likely to take risks!
Much hand-wringing is spent putting no-export warnings on code, obfuscating the download process to discourage non-US people, and warning others not to export.
Nobody wants to be the first one to cross the line and be arrested. Fortunately, posting is easy and anybody can participate. Nobody has to be (in any meaningful way) the first to go. There is simply no way that the government will be able to lock up 1000s of professors, grad students, businessmen, programmers, or politicians for sharing mathematics when in the consensual hallucination we call the news, the country is being overrun by violent criminals. Maybe July 4 would be a good date? Dr. Roberts