On Fri, 24 May 1996, Martin Minow wrote:

The briefing might go something like this: "Remember the terrorist bombing of the Libian Embassy? Well, "they" were planning to bomb the <??> embassy, but we intercepted their messages and prevented the attack.

Libyan embassies don't get bombed. They just have thugs shooting unarmed WPCs from them under protection of diplomatic immunity (I used to live in Pimlico, and went to college in South Kensington, and going past the Yvonne Fletcher memorial always got me upset Anyway, they're not just state sponsored terrorists, they're the actual terrorist state, and can thus can easily get access to whatever crypto they want; in extrimis shipping OTPs by diplomatic pouch; it's the smaller, unofficial groups where the case is most easily made. If I thought that restricting crypto were possible, I might be convinced by solid argument along this line, though as a Londoner and having spent some time working in Israel, I'm probably easier to convince than most people here (just about the only tube station I used to use regularly that wasn't hit by the IRA was Chigwell, and that isn't wholly a good thing :-). However, now that the four horses have gone, and all that's left in the stable are the my little ponies, why slam the barn door and bop their noses for no good reason? Simon