At 03:09 PM 9/26/97 -0400, Jonah Seiger wrote:

4. CDT continues to support efforts to relax encryption export controls.

And that is where you are wrong: We need crypto legislation like we need nine inch nails hammered through our skulls. Any legislative attention to crypto is bad and dangerous, as we have been saying for years, and has just been dramatically proven once again. Business lobby groups are intermediaries, and therefore serve two masters, both the politicians and the businessmen, not one master. Frequently they serve the interests of the politicians at the expense of their donors, at the expense of the goals that the lobby group is supposed to pursue.

We also recognize the realities of politics. No matter how much any of us might wish it to be true, members of the Commerce Committee were not willing to stand up and simply oppose everything.

This is a bunch of crap: It is highly likely that no bill will go through. Most bills die. This bill should die. Killing bills is always politically safer than passing them, doing nothing cannot get you into trouble.

It was not in the cards. White and Markey offered them a chance to defeat Oxley while throwing a small bone to law enforcement. We believe that passage of SAFE with the White-Markey amendment, despite the problems with the criminal provisions, is on balance, a step forward in the fight for encryption policy reform.

This is untrue and dishonest. No bill at all is the best step forward, and doing nothing is always easiest to attain.

As always, I am happy to respond to queries about CDT's positions and tactics, but I am not interested in engaging in public flame throwing.

The CDT is ultimately a business lobby group, because it gets most of its funding from businesses. It is therefore potentially subject to the same corruption as other business lobbies. Business lobby groups are intermediaries, and therefore serve two masters, both the politicians and the businessmen, not one master. Frequently they serve the interests of the politicians at the expense of their donors, at the expense of the goals that the lobby group is supposed to pursue. Suppose for example you have a lobby group that represents the widget industry. On the one hand, the CEO of General Widgets might ring them up and say: "We are being trashed by these great japanese widgets, and unless something is done about it we might have to reduce prices or improve quality", and the lobby organization has a little chat with some tame politicians about the terrible suffering the Japanese are inflicting on American workers. That is the way lobby groups are supposed to work, but seldom do. On the other hand sometimes the politician (or a gofer on his staff), rings the lobby and says: "I need a million dollars fast: What potential political action gets the chairman of General Widgets waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night? What could destroy the widget industry, and yet be politically feasible?" Shortly thereafter the lobbyist has a little chat with chairman of General Widgets about forthcoming legislation. The lobby group gets a big bag of money, some of which it passes on to the politician, and the threatened legislation evaporates until the next election. To be a successful lobby group, the CDT needs to get its fingerprints on legislation, so that it can make threats and promises to businessmen in the computer industry. Thus the CDT's best interests as an organization are contrary to our desires and contrary to the announced aims of the organization. Legislation, any legislation, is in their interests and legislation, any legislation is against our interests. Our interests, and the CDT's interest are opposed with no apparent mutual good possible. Now it is possible that the CDT is virtuously pursuing its supposed goals, rather than its practical interests. We should consider the available evidence in order to infer what it is in fact up to. According to Dave Barry the word "politics" derives from the Greek "poly" meaning many, and "ticks" meaning small disgusting bloodsucking parasites. In order to be well funded, the CDT needs government regulation of the net. The kind of regulation that would be most effective in ensuring large donations would be regulation that compels internet businessmen to lobby the government. for example regulations that make impossible, inconsistent, and contradictory requirements on those who provide software, hardware, and services, for example a demand that big companies police the net in ways that even governments would find extremely difficult, such as the British child porn crackdown, or legislation which if properly crafted would have the effect of giving some businessmen a monopoly of some aspect of the net, and putting other businessmen out of business, for example legislation that requires case by case approval of software, or legislation that compels the businessman to invade his customers privacy, and also prohibits him from invading that privacy unless he has a waiver issued by the state. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd@echeque.com