-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- James A. Donald <jamesd@netcom.com> wrote:

Anonymous writes

...

I have a proposal for you all.

I have started work on a Crypto Declaration of Independence, based on the famous American work which represents Independence.

This is unwise and unnecessary.

It is unwise because we do not wish to alert the government to the fact that the net is largely ungoverned and ungovernable.

I do not think it is unwise because we do want to state a position for ourselves. We need to let everyone, including the government, know that we will not stand for crypto-policy which is not in our best interest. No matter what comes, we will continue to use PGP, SHTTP, link-encryption and every method which we have determined to be in our best interest, not what we must have faith in what we are told is in our best interest.

It is unnecessary because crypto is already covered by various existing declarations on rights.

THE BILL OF RIGHTS

This is bullshit, and you know it as well as I do. A steady stream of misinformation has mislead government officials into 'ignoring' these rights when dealing with electronic documents, and encryption specifically. When the administration has something which might be unfavorable in the public eye (ie, Clipper), they quickly try to pass it through, ignoring public cries in the process. How many letters did it take before there were any open hearings about the EES, and then the words of respected professionals were seemingly ignored as the policy was pushed ahead. This was not thought to be an extremist attempt at breaking off from our current government. It's also not supposed to be a confrontational attack. It was intended to be a strong statement, letting all know what we believe in and why we do. We need to declare our independence from being governed by policy which encroaches on our rights, rights which this country was founded in, and rights which are being ignored. Asynchronous -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAgUBLuwXDFG1rORFKstdAQEc2wP/Ytq8crc/8YiHlYeO9eoF/Mrx4Q39be9t Y1vD/Hn2qcvXUlWqtqfSPZXzpBV10rNH2qZ0L1A7j/ErUxqXm4Xqz36fWDgxht2m t/KWBXydSBzGDt3HEgmXQ29XE0Ka8w9iaXXq0bKfx87l5XPuknOnAyu8ZBEPj4wM dN5Gc4uMdtM= =vrB+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----