Hi Bob -- I feel mis-quoted and/or mis-represented in your note (below) stating that "Magaziner mirrored Rivest's offer to tax encryption products to pay for increased law enforcement technology support". While I do feel that some measure of appropriate balance may be accomplished by increasing the budget of the FBI and other law-enforcement to help them compensate for whatever increased difficulties they encounter because of the widespread use of encryption, I do not recall ever suggesting that the revenues for such increased budgets be raised by specifically taxing encryption products, and I don't really think that is a sensible approach. We don't tax glove manufacturers to raise funds for the FBI fingerprint lab! Any such funding should come out of general revenues, not by further complicating the tax code. Cheers, Ron ------- Start of forwarded message ------- Return-Path: <cryptography-owner@c2.net> X-Sender: rah@pop.sneaker.net In-Reply-To: <v03130304b227b7401a3a@[24.128.118.53]> Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 16:44:07 -0400 To: "Arnold G. Reinhold" <reinhold@world.std.com>, cypherpunks@cyberpass.net, cryptography@c2.net, dcsb@ai.mit.edu From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com> Subject: Re: Questions for Magaziner? Sender: owner-cryptography@c2.net Okay, so the short precis on Magaziner's answer to my question about encryption controls, foriegn or domestic, is he's agin it. He says that controlling foriegn encryption is impossible, and controlling domestic encryption is, at the very least, unconstitutional. He says that the reason the administration's encryption policy is so convoluted is that the law enforcement and the "economic" encryption camps, anti, and pro, evidently, is that the two sides are at loggerheads. Magaziner mirrored Rivest's offer to tax encryption products to pay for increased law enforcement technology support, but, hey, he's a liberal democrat, he's supposed to tax us to death without thinking about the economic, and, of course privacy consequences of raising the price of encryption. So, all in all, he got a round of foot-stomping applause from this bunch on his pro-encryption stance, because, evidently, being a payments technology forum, he was preaching to the choir. Something I found out when I was doing my own speech yesterday. I should realize that anyone building a payment system knows that digital commerce is financial cryptography, after all. :-) Cheers, Bob Hettinga - ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' ------- End of forwarded message -------