At 09:48 PM 6/19/96 -0500, ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov) wrote:

A couple of questions [admittedly, I am not the best expect in American politics]: 1) Is there anything real that individual citizens can do? Agitate - it worked well when Clipper first came out. Write code to do things regular people want to do, so that they'll be trying to ban existing material instead of new material, and so people will get used to using encryption. PGP is nice, but imagine if everyone who used Netscape had windows popping up that said "Encrypting your message to $RECIPIENT. Cc: to the FBI? [Yes] [No]"

2) Would it be helpful to kick democrats out of office and replace them with republicans? In other words, are republicans any better than democrats in respecting citizens' right to protecting their privacy from the government?

Remember that the Clipper initiative and development started during the Presidency of ex-CIA-director and all-around sleazemeister George Bush. You could say it was dumb luck that it came out during Clinton's watch, so he got the credit/blame, but the folks who are pushing it have the political savvy to know they'd have far less luck with a lame-duck Bush proposal during a Clinton "Reinventing Government" than by waiting until Clinton's securely in office, giving him some credit, and having the Republicans who were around when it started supporting them as well. [Or they could have expected Bush to be re-elected, and figured announcing it before the election wouldn't help. Or the product could have just been late :-)] Not much difference; if anything, Democrats are usually more in favor of free speech than Republicans, and would be more likely to oppose it. They're both a pretty sad lot, though there are occasional Congresscritters who sometimes get it. Now, kicking out Democrats and Republicans and replacing them with Libertarians, Perotistas, Greens, or even Reds would have a positive effect, at least for a little while, but that's a bit more work. :-) # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com # http://www.idiom.com/~wcs # Dispel Authority!