Then, TM came to say that this is irrelevant. TM was right in the context of the post, but it led me to ask myself this (vague) question:

What is the real issue here, what makes the govt so insistent about wanting to ban crypto? What is such a threat to them that it makes them pass laws that are profoundly against the US constitution?

What causes their panic?

They want to read your mail. They would like to read your mind too.

To this, all I can find of enough magnitude to put them in such state is that they just recently *truly* realized that crypto will, infinitely more than to threaten the security of the state, threaten their very existence by putting them outside of the money loop.

I disagree. I think they want to read your mail. I don't believe they are scared of "digital bearer bonds" etc., although I do believe that this is the most hyped issue on these mailing lists ...

Any comments about why we should *not* put most emphasis on the financial aspect of crypto?

Because the financial aspects are hyped way out of proportion on these mailing lists? Also, you will find that the govt does *not* want to ban financial crypto - it only wants to ban encryption - so how can you argue that they are panicking because of the financial aspect of crypto? You can't. They panic because they can't read your mail. Gary -- pub 1024/C001D00D 1996/01/22 Gary Howland <gary@hotlava.com> Key fingerprint = 0C FB 60 61 4D 3B 24 7D 1C 89 1D BE 1F EE 09 06

I think that *this* debate should be injected in the population and the *bogus* "national security" debate should be dismissed as, just that : bogus.

Never underestimate how weirded out people can get about "security". You don't know about this, living in Canada, but nobody in America can use a mailbox to mail a package now, just because one guy mailed a few bombs. We live in a time in which rocks in the parks have warning labels bolted to them ('Caution: Slippery when wet'). I could go on forever and so could you. Health and security are the governing superstitions of our age. Allowing uncontrolled encryption not only seems to open the door to specific bogeymen, but frustrates the power of the 'security apparatus' in general and across the board. Nothing is scarier than rhetoric about the police being helpless to protect you. Few politicans are willing to leave themselves open to the charge of not standing by the police or tying the police's hands. I think 99 out of a hundred politicians 'thinking' about encryption never get past this point. Most of them don't know enough to know that tax collection is even an issue. (Not that it probably is; governments used to raise most of their money by taxing atoms -- real property and capital goods -- and nobody I know has thought of a reason why they can't do it again.)

For most peoples, privacy in itself is worth something only if if they have some *value* they want to preserve. Most of the time, this value concretizes itself as "money". So if we talk to them in terms *they* understand, we run a much better chance to make them understand why spreading crypto is a tool we believe will greatly enhance human's life quality.

Any comments about why we should *not* put most emphasis on the financial aspect of crypto?

What are you saying here? That we should be arguing that encryption should be permitted because it will allow people to avoid paying taxes? I'm afraid the set of people that would respond well to that argument is not was large as you would hope. Fred www.pobox.com/~hapgood

On 13 Sep 97 at 9:19, Tim May wrote:

(JF won't see this, unless Bob H. chooses to pass it on, Sandy-style. This on unedited, undelayed lists, not on digests and delayed condensations.)

AFAIK, e$pam is not edited and not a digest. But there might be parental control ... :-)

At 9:57 AM -0700 9/13/97, jf_avon@citenet.net wrote:

...

Hi.

I've been lazily following the crypto-control issue through e$pam list.

Read the real list.

Tim, there are a lot of important issues in life, and crypto is only one of them. I value your opinion a lot and find most of your comments to be not only valid but even often wise. But of course, as a CP highness, you seems to sometimes forget :-) that: 1) CP is carrier to so much things that I don't find interesting 2) every second wasted never comes back 3) some of my other interests requires as much time as CP, mostly Canadian Firearms Digest where locally, we Canucks, are fighting a battle you are no stranger with, only we got it worse than you Yankees. 4) IMO, crypto has to be a useful tool to be interesting. I am more interested in improving life than in building aesthetic mathematical algorithms. And the most direct way to achieve this is anonymous e-$, not guns. 5) fighting for privacy rights will be irrelevant when govt will have been starved to extinction by e-$. 6) If I subtract from my awake time my working time, my eating time, my washing time, my ****ing time and my domestic chores time, it leaves me with time I can do whatever I want. This remaining time is always too short. 7) After several weeks of being on CP and e$pam and e$ simultaneously, I found that I can read most of you posts on CP via e$pam, great thanks to RAH. RAH seems to forward everything that is even remotely related to e-$. Unless RAH has a Machielavelous plan to induce everybody in error, for the time being, he does a great job. I subscribe from times to times to CP for random durations at random moments just to cross-check theses things. My last year long absence from CP was caused by entirely other things. I had no time for any net stuff at all.

As a comment, sometimes when I try to "reply to all" to these messages from folks reading digests, I get "you are not a member of this list" or "this is a private list" messages.

Why don't you try jf_avon@citenet.net? :-) Get a decent mailer and you'll find it's easy... :-)

Fine, but it's why I won't waste time on folks who may not even see what I write unless I address it to them personally.

So now, do you propose mandatory voluntary subscription to some mailing lists? :-) Never thought about telepathy? Or becoming a prominent TV figure so that *everybody* (well, almost...) would be force-fed to TM-Stuff (tm) ? :-) OK, OK, I push it a bit but why should I have to suffer the intelligent and down to the point discussions on CP if I consider that I have other better things to do? The issue comes down to the respect of the Individual. Could I, pe-lease, have my own interests? Pe-lease? As for your perception of "loosing time on folks [snip]", I opinate that it is an error from you. Although I am off from CP, I recently ordered Applied Crypto (at last, I found the money...), and I plan to give a small introduction talk to various persons and groups. I make *every* *damn* *efforts* to spread PGP with everybody I know, distributing software and keys. But you see, if you say to somebody : this will encrypt your communications" they don't give a shit. If you explain to them the digital telephony bill, the current tapping capability, the various moves that the govt is currently doing, *and* crypto through the e-$ applications *and* political consequences of e-$, *then* they *really* do get interested. In my own experience, introducing the topic by the e-$/govt-intrusion door is what gets them the motivation to learn text-based plain-vanilla PGP. And as I said in an earlier post, the more they get their money confiscated in the name of the Great Unwashed Happiness, the more they get interested. So, "that folk" is one it is unwise to neglect, he just gets overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff on CP. Most of the discouraged just unsubscribe and a few rare stick to it in diverse, indirect ways. The ones who stick to it might just be the most persistent of them all.

JF, get a decent mailer and get on the real list if you want to participate.

I use Pegasus Mail V2.53 with a kill file verging on the terabyte thank you. And I don't want to "participate", I want to exchange ideas. Peoples who want to do so with me will do so. If it is too much work to include me in your replies, just don't bother.

Oh, and "cypherpunks@toad.com"

Please send me a valid name so I can keep posting to CP without suffering the irrelevant-to-my-interests stuff, in full confidence that RAH will keep doing it's fantastic job of forwarding your most-of-the-time-interesting-to-me posts. Ciao Tim Ciao all jfa

On 13 Sep 97 at 12:16, Black Unicorn wrote:

...

To this, all I can find of enough magnitude to put them in such state is that they just recently *truly* realized that crypto will, infinitely more than to threaten the security of the state, threaten their very existence by putting them outside of the money loop.

Strongly disagree.

In fact, the forces driving the current legislation, FBI, DoD, are more concerned not with being unable to decrypt in realtime than they are about being unable to distinquish, en masse, the bad actors encrypted communications with the paranoid but harmless crypto user. If crypto gets widespread enough there is no way to filter one from the other any longer.

Your last sentence means that they can read crypted text. They even hinted at it recently. But then, why the proposed law? Do they indulge in statistical efficiency or do they want 99.9999+% efficiency at their "filtering"? I'd say if they "filter" only, say, 90% of all communications and an Oklahoma City plan passes by in the 10% remaining, it won't be good enough for them. So, why the law if they already can decrypt? Can you reasonnably expect the vilains to use the most easy-to-crack and/or GAKed schemes?

The "private currency and taxation loss" is not even on the radar screens. Oliver Ireland, of the fed, thinks its just silly to think that way. Also see Kendall Houghton, (Committee on State Taxation) remarks on the subject. The powers that be just roll their eyes at the "no more taxes" crypto-radical crowd.

If you were in their shoes, what would you say to the public? Ever heard about the game called Poker? Did Santa told you they would never lie to you? In the last few weeks, I've been thinking about the utility and security risk of using PGP if it can be cracked easily. And then, I realized that my reaction was probably just what they expected: FUD to have people limit by themselves their use of strong crypto. Coupled with the cops saying that "of course, we can decode them, but just a tad too slow to protect your childs...", I now believe they just can't crack it. And with it, comes their crackdown on crypto users, their e-$ and their crypted love letters. jfa -- Jean-Francois Avon, Pierrefonds(Montreal) QC Canada DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee Finest of Limoges porcelain and crystal JFA Technologies, R&D consultants physicists and engineers, LabView programing. PGP encryption keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon http://bs.mit.edu:8001/pks-toplev.html ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891 ID# 5B51964D : 152ACCBCD4A481B0 254011193237822C