Duncan Frissell wrote:
More generally, it is legal not to speak and thus to deprive police and prosecutors of the contents of your mind. Crypto just extends this right.
Duncan, as he often does, points out a small truth which goes to the very heart of the issue of criminalizing strong encryption. Criminalizing crypto is criminalizing _private_speech_ and also _private_thought_. Mark my words, when the day comes that LEA's have the technology to read human thoughts, then we will be seeing this same debate taking place in that arena. The "legitimate needs of law enforcement" rhetoric, et al, will be drug out for the billionth time to thwart the danger that a CypherPunk might fart in the woods without an LEA recording it. Think back to the first time you read "1984" and think about what you, yourself, could _add_ to the book from your own personal knowledge and experience since that date. If we added all of the instances of "Big Brother" becoming an accepted reality of everyday life since then, the tome would rival "War and Peace" in volume and scope. If I choose to write my prayers on a word processor, in order to better organize my spiritual thoughts and be able to reference them to remember my promises to God, does the State have a right to demand I let them view those prayers, and private religious thoughts? If I use a computer to write my attorney, perhaps even outlining my activities, etc., in regard to criminal charges against me, does the State have a right to demand access to it? Am I allowed to whisper to my lawyer in court, but not to type what I want him to know on a computer screen he has in front of him in the same courtroom? Am I allowed to tell a $200/hour psychiatrist that someone made me mad enough to "kill" them in order to stay sane enough not to do so, and have it kept confidential, but be denied the right, if I am a poor person, to do the exact same thing in writing on my computer, with the help of a $4.95 paperback self-help/psychology book? Have private thoughts been "corporatized/governmentized" somehow? Are our private thoughts sacred only when shared with a recognized authority? If I share them with myself, do they become the property of the State? Am I totally out of my mind, or has life become tremendously fucking scary, and nobody but me has noticed? Sometimes I feel like the guy on the plane in the "Twilight Zone" movie, who is the only one who can see the monster on the plane's wing that is endangering everyone's life. And if you shoot at the monster nobody else can see, then they strap you down and take you to the rubber room. (Obvious analogy to McVeigh and Death Row purely unintentional.) {"Your honor, this search warrant is for the purpose of cracking the suspect's head open with a crowbar and prying his brain out so that we can poke around, in _good_faith_, I assure you, and look for evidence that pertains to a crime that may have been committed.") If you don't provide a breathalyzer sample, you are automatically guilty of drunken driving (even if the DMV License Tester is handing you a perfect score/report as the officer places you in handcuffs). I have no doubt that under future key escrow laws that your prayers to God and your letters to yourself detailing the most intimate details of your life will make you automatically guilty of tax evasion unless you allow strangers who are hostile to you (police, judges, prosecutors) to read them. Yes, and one day, even our private thoughts will be considered to automatically make us guilty criminals unless we allow LEA's access to them. (The "lie detector" is a case in point, and it has in the past come dangerously close to being afforded the same status as the breathalyzer, even though it represents "voodoo" as much as it does "science.") If a tree falls in the forest, and nobody hears it--is it a drug trafficking tree or a child molesting tree? TruthMonger