---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 14:27:06 -0400 From: "Shabbir J. Safdar" <shabbir@vtw.org> To: fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu, fight-censorship-announce@vorlorn.mit.edu Subject: Are we men or mice? Re: House panel votes behind closed doors to build in Big Brother At 11:37 PM -0700 9/11/97, Declan McCullagh wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 23:37:39 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: fight-censorship-announce@vorlon.mit.edu .. That's why the encryption outlook in Congress is abysmal. Crypto-advocates have lost, and lost miserably. A month ago, the debate was about export controls. Now the battle is over how strict the //domestic// controls will be. It's sad, really, that so many millions of lobbyist-dollars were not only wasted, but used to advance legislation that has been morphed into a truly awful proposal.

This suggests the battle is over and lost. It's not, and a tone of this sort only plays into the FBI's hands. Feeling like they're on a roll, if the community throws in the towel now, as your tone above suggests, we cede defeat and get domestic restrictions. We have a goddamn right to use encryption without a government backdoor, and I, and nobody else, should give up until it's dragged from our rigor-mortis-addled hands. In Congress, there are still votes left, and we should be fighting to make sure that no member of Congress that has a vote at any point in this process should cast that vote without knowing that their net constituents care about this. They may not always vote with their constituents' wishes (and that is frustrating to all of us) but we certain-as-hell shouldn't let them make that call without having at least constituent input. You want to see effectiveness and change, do something constructive instead of whining on the net. For example, let people know that by signing up for the Adopt Your Legislator program at http://www.crypto..com/member/ they will be notified before and after every vote that their legislator is a party to, complete with phone and fax nnmbers. It may look gloomy now, but bad votes should only make us madder and more determined to lobby Congress. It's easy to complain about the fact that you don't like the direction the boat is going; much harder to devote your energies to actually changing the course. Pick up an oar and row. If you get domestic restrictions on encryption and you haven't been calling your member of Congress on a regular basis to tell them to do the right thing, you'll get exactly the kind of government you've invested in. -S PS I would like this to go to fight-censorship-announce as well, please.