Good point: but I've seen a few refs from LEAs about "Drug Dealer X who we can't talk about" or "Child Pornographer Y who we can't talk about" (in lieu of cases being digested by the court system) so I didn't harp on that point. A point I did leave out was that if they already knew these people were criminals and were building cases against them, monitoring them enough to know they used crypto, then do they really need to bother with listening in to the exact message? I wanted to emphasize the phallacy of the sacrifical lamb of rights in the name of the god of security. Also, they mungled the letter enough, so it's better for LI Newsday (which caters to a reading level of the average 12-year-old) submissions to be kept short and sweet. I'm quite surprised that mine is the only letter they printed. Certainly they would have gotten more than one submission on a controversial subject? --Rob On 5 Feb 97 at 18:22, jim bell wrote:
But which "criminals," exactly, are "increasingly using encryption to conceal their plans and activities"? Let's not concede this unless it's really true.
It would be far more accurate to say that it's likely that many people who are politically hostile to their government are using encryption in anticipation of persecution by the government, persecution that could easily come in the form of criminal charges.
Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com
----- "The word to kill ain't dirty | Robert Rothenburg (WlkngOwl@unix.asb.com) I used it in the last line | http://www.asb.com/usr/wlkngowl/ but use a short word for lovin' | Se habla PGP: Reply with the subject and dad you wind up doin' time." | 'send pgp-key' for my public key.