---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 4 Sep 1997 07:38:05 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Comparing encryption to airbags: both hurt the public ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 4 Sep 1997 09:48:53 -0400 From: Julie DeFalco <defalco@cei.org> To: declan@well.com Subject: Airbags Actually, the similarity between airbags and encryption is a good comparison. The public will be hurt by encryption controls, just as the public has been hurt by airbags. A few facts: Airbags were promoted by Joan Claybrook in the 1970s and 1980s as a wonderful technology which worked for everybody from large males to little children. She claimed that they would save thousands and thousands of lives each year, and that they would work for unbelted occupants. Claybrook even pressured the manufacturers to use the technologies which she now condemns today (don't get me started on Claybrook's mendacity on the airbag issue. She is a flat-out liar). Well, while airbags have indeed saved some people who otherwise would have died, they have not worked nearly as well as promised. They specifically hurt the weakest people in our society -- small children, short women, and the elderly. They add about six hundred dollars to the price of new cars, which encourages poorer people to keep older, possibly less safe cars longer. Now Claybrook even claims that airbags would work better if people weren't "out of position" -- i.e. if they were wearing seatbelts, even though the entire point of airbags was to provide "passive restraints" because people didn't wear seatbelts. Encryption controls will, like airbags, be far more dangerous to the public than currently promoted. And once given the power, it will be pretty difficult, if not impossible, to take it away from government agencies. Even with airbags documented as killing people, the government won't let us have the choice whether to have them in the car at all. The biggest concession the government will make is allowing car companies to include an on-off switch. This is why CEI will soon publish directions on our website on how to dismantle your own airbags (well, as soon as we square away the legal stuff). Ciao! Julie ________________________________ Julie DeFalco Policy Analyst Competitive Enterprise Institute 1001 Connecticut Ave., NW Suite 1250 Washington, DC 20036 (202) 331-1010 Fax: (202) 331-0640 http://www.cei.org