At 1:14 AM 11/9/95, Bill Stewart wrote: <deletia> | The fact that Netscape is including | secure email in their Navigator next release can be a big lever pushing the | Feds toward giving up, and perhaps deserves some publicity once the | release version is out the door. Giving up on what? On doing everything within its power to keep the world beyond itself strong-cypto-free? Not likely. In only a few decades, crypto's gone from being unheard of to the object of an increasingly high-profile PR war over "domestic and international terrorists and criminals." The govt's position, however, hasn't changed substantially: it doesn't like crypto, and it never will. There will never be a time when the cops who pull you over or drop by for a visit will say, "Ma'am, if you've encrypted that, we respect the fact that you don't want anyone to see that--so we'll just be going bow. You have a nice day, now, y'hear." And there will never be no cops. The gov't may well lose this fight eventually, but a few heads are gonna get broken before either side wins. This fight is playing itself out on the level of policy now, but it's much bigger than a policy issue. And the "revolution" of Newt and his legions of weenies (I say nothing of Clinton and his legions of weenies) is bullshit: he's an empty opportunist who's riding a fractious coalition that'll make Clinton look like a libertarian if it ever gets control of the country. And right now he's cluing in to the fact that he can score some points on encryption issues: he's got his eye on the snowballing WiReD coalition, which *no one* knew existed until a few years ago.