Illegal Acts & Crypto
The dumbest question of all: "But if you aren't doing anything illegal, why do you need crypto? (or have to worry about stop-and-frisk, or need legal due process protections.) Only lawbreakers have to worry if their privacy is violated." Great thought. Now tell me what will be illegal in 40 years in all the jurisdictions in which I will live. In addition, tell me what (legal) behaviors or characteristics of mine will nonetheless cause me to lose social approbation//jobs//friends//etc in all of the societies in which I will live. Statistics say I've got 40 years left. Forty years ago, smoking was a virtue and sodomy a vice. Twenty-five years ago, money laundering was as legal as church on a Sunday and every bank in America offered defacto secret bank accounts. Given the speed with which things are changing, in twenty-five more years, participating on a crypto mailing list like this could be punished by the death penalty under the Krypto Kingpins Kontrol Act of 2005. Or if things go another way, advocates of government key escrow systems could be subject to outlawry and instant public "vector control measures" if they accidentally wander onto the land of the wrong proprietary community. You never know. In the last 200 years of human history, people have been killed at one time or another in one place or another simply because they had any human characteristic you could name or indulged in any human behavior. You name the characteristic or behavior and I bet I can name the time when people somewhere were died because of it. Giving up your privacy is too great a risk. What do you gain. Besides, if we are all equal then the rulers are equal to us and we don't have to give up our autonomy to them. DCF --- WinQwk 2.0b#1165
The dumbest question of all:
"But if you aren't doing anything illegal, why do you need crypto? (or have to worry about stop-and-frisk, or need legal due process protections.) Only lawbreakers have to worry if their privacy is violated."
Not that I think Government Is Our Friend (tm), but all this talk about needing privacy to protect us from the government is missing the biggest point. We need privacy from criminals. We need to keep keys private, even from the government, because: 1. sometimes the criminals are *in* the government 2. a key database is too easy for a criminal organization to get to
participants (2)
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Carl Ellison -
Duncan Frissell