I objected to Anthony Ortenzi's article on Dorothy Denning. Much of the attacks seemed appropriate for a politician like Clinton (:-)), but aren't appropriate for an academic who's doing politics about technical areas, where there so much more *useful* ways to flame her ideas, rather than her character.
Number 1, if someone is an encryption expert [...], why would they endorse anyone but the recipient being able to decode the message?
Number 2. [Newsday...] The argument was just very, well, flimsy is the word I guess. I thought so too. Part of it was from writing for a non-technical audience, but some of her arguments have been appallingly weak. El Rukn was a
You're confusing technical tactics with political/social goals. She's an expert in what you can do with encryption, she just has different values about who should be able to benefit from it and how. particularly bad example :-), and as you say, it would be nice if she'd just come out and say the government should spy on all of us to keep us from doing Bad Things; it's an argument people can relate to and discuss (though it'll get a lot of negative reaction, which is not her objective.)
Anyone know: A) Is she an expert in cryptography? Yes - her book from the early 1980s was *the* standard text on crypto for quite a few years, and she's published some other reasonable papers. Dr. Denning is department head of CS or EE or something at Georgetown.
C) Was she dropped on her head a lot as a baby? Probably got scared by a Commie Terrorist Drug Dealer, and comforted by some friendly federal police officer... or else was educated in government-run schools. :-)
Also, I've gotten a message through to Ross Perot about our fight against Clipper, and how to reach me, so if I get a response, I'll let Clipper sounds like just the kind of thing Perot would enjoy.
Bill