At 02:06 PM 7/14/96 -0700, David Sternlight wrote:

At 2:37 PM -0700 7/14/96, jim bell wrote:

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At 10:17 AM 7/14/96 -0700, David Sternlight wrote:

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Your best shot would be to make sure the part about the system being voluntary was hard-wired into any legislation or rule-making.

Wrong. Our "best shot" is to ensure that no "key escrow" legislation is adopted, and moreover export restrictions on crypto are eliminated.

Nope. That's some people's preferred shot, but may not be the best one

Okay, "best" by which definition? And don't avoid the question: Am I not free to reject YOUR opinion of what the "best" solution is FOR ME?

or even a realistic one.

"Realistic"? Who's definition?

It's certainly a partisan political advocacy (in the sense that people are partisan about this issue, not in the sense of a particular political party).

Meaningless tripe. All you're saying is that people disagree. People disagree about a lot of things; that doesn't legitimize opposing opinions.

Yet that attitude didn't get any legislation to stop Clipper I.

We didn't NEED "any legislation to stop Clipper I." Quite the opposite, anyone promoting Clipper NEEDS legislation to force it on unwilling citizens.

My point was very simple--if the government is going to say a system is voluntary, make them put it in writing in the rules or legislation.

Why have the "system" in the first place? No legislation, no system. Simple.

We failed to do that with Clipper I (when they said in non-rulesmaking statements that they had no intention of making escrow mandatory--but nobody said "OK. Put it in writing as a formal policy.")

No, you're misrepresenting the issue: You're trying to subtly suggest that we should have agreed with MOST of the Clipper proposal AS LONG AS it was explicitly made voluntary. (Yet nothing prevents Congress from writing and passing a law which prohibits the executive branch of government from making escrow mandatory; they haven't done this.) Quite the contrary: I don't trust the government to implement any such proposal EVEN IF it is, ostensibly, "voluntary." The voluntary/involuntary aspect is an excellent reason to oppose Clipper, but is by no means the only one. Also, I don't trust the government's definition (and dynamically changeable interpretation) of the word, "voluntary." Since Clipper was funded with tax dollars stolen from the public its very existence is already a violation of the "voluntary" requirement. The fact that Clipper was developed without substantial public (and I mean PUBLIC, not some selected committee of bootlickers) input and debate proves that the government knew it could get no support for the idea. One of the recently revealing aspects of the government's dishonesty concerning Clipper was a clarification which stated that Clipper telephones could not communicate with any crypto telephone that didn't implement key escrow. But as anyone who followed the Beta vs. VHS competition saw, the market generally abhors two mutually incompatible standards, particularly if a certain level of compatibility is required or is at least desirable, and particularly if there is no good reason to maintain BOTH those standads. The main disadvantages to maintaining two tape formats was the inconvenience of sharing tapes with people who had the opposite format, the requirement that retail stores maintain two stocks, and the requirement that rental people support both formats. There were no powerful incentives to maintain two standards, and thus one had to die. Crypto telephones, by definition, need to be far more compatible with each other than VCR machines. They must actually talk to each other. Imagine a world in which there were two different crypto formats, and for stupid political reasons they were entirely incompatible: System "A" couldn't talk to system "B." What would happen? It's obvious: One format would kill the other. People wouldn't tolerate the compatibility. The US Government wanted the surviving system to be Clipper, and to accomplish this they used stolen tax dollars to secretly develop a system that they hoped would nip the potential competing systems in the bud. It didn't work, of course, but it is clear what they tried to do. If, on the other hand, there was no impediment to system "A" talking to system "B", both systems could easily co-exist. A few suckers would buy Clipper phones; the rest of us would insist on good encryption. Clipper would eventually die, just as Beta VCR's eventually did. The government understands this, that's why they inserted the requirement for incompatibility.

. As a result, many in government even at the higher policy-making levels are still calling for mandatory escrow. Had it been in the rules, it's less likely they could have overtly gone against a rules-making covenant/compromise.

Hmmmm... I thought Congress made arming the Contras in Nicaragua explicitly illegal. Yet Ollie North got away with it, effectively. What is it that makes you so certain that Government has gotten any more honest in the past 10 years?

It's simple pragmatic regulatory politics.

And that's exactly the problem! That's because it's also wrong. We don't need to be "pragmatic" by YOUR definition.

It's how the system works,

Actually, in the past the system has "worked" by suckering in the public, in exactly the way you're attempting to do. Tricking them into supporting things that were bad for them. Remember the "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution"?

and using the system itself to achieve one's goals is one of the more powerful techniques around. You don't have to like it, but you do have to decide whether you'd rather be "right" or get the result.

In a sense, we ALREADY have "the result," or at least a substantial fraction of it. Development of domestic crypto is ostensibly free. The only thing desired further in the elimination of any residual restrictions, WITHOUT letting the government set up any sort of key-escrow system, voluntary OR involuntary. As far as I can see, cooperation at this point with the pro-GAK forces can only hurt the cause. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com