Tim May wrote:

At 9:09 AM -0800 11/13/98, John Young wrote:

...

Senator Kyl has issued a long report, "Crime, Terror & War: National Security and Public Safety in the Information Age," ... http://jya.com/ctw.htm (97K)

I'll address one section, near the end of the report: ...

While I wholeheartly believe that the open-minded and interested public would want to hear these mindless rants responded to with some rationality and reason, I don't believe, for a moment that Kyl & gang are serious about debating anything. (Ok, there is a TEENY chance he is just confused.) My money on the claim that these are yet more rhetoric thrown out to confuse as many people who are easily taken over by sound bites as possible. It's not as easy to explain the practical reasons why crypto restrictions are unenforcible and unreasonable, but it's easy to trumpet the national security cause and to raise the spectre of police not being able to protect lil' Johnny and Mary. What I was hoping for from the pro-crypto ads was something like this: 1. Lil' Suzy writes E-Mail to Lil' Mary to meet at the mall at some well-lighted public place. 2. Child molestor X intercepts E-Mail, but it's weak 40-bit encryption, and he breaks it. 3. Mr. X forges E-Mail from Mary to Suzy changing the meeting location to some dark corner A, and forges E-Mail from Suzy to Mary changing the meeting locaiton to some dark corner B. 4. Mr. X's co-conspirators, Mr. Y and Mr Z intercepts Mary and Suzy at the respective dark corners ... they scream for help ... no one answers at either location ... fade to black ... This is the sort of stuff that would really counter the stupid rhetoric from Sen. Kyl. Ern