Jim Ray asks what on earth I'm talking about the 9th amendment not applying to the right to write code, since people were using codes to protect their communications long before the passage of the bill of rights. I always understood "writing code" as in "cypherpuks write code" to mean computer code, that is FORTRAN, C++, assembler, perl or whatever. I understand "writing IN code" to be the use of cryptographic tools such as codes or cyphers. Thus my claim that the right to write IN code may have existed in the 1790s, but the right to write [computer] code could not (since there were no computers). Of course, I could be wrong about this, since however you define it, it's debateable whether I'd pass the code test to qualify as a cypherpunk, since I stopped writing code when I gave up programming for lawyering, and I didn't start writing in code when I started writing about codes. In any case it's a matter of definitions, not timelines. Note: I am not suggesting that the right to write code lacks constitutional protection; just that the protection wouldn't come from the 9th amendment. My views on the constitutional right to write IN code, which also does not rely on the 9th amendment, can be found in my Clipper paper, which Hal Abelson has kindly ported in Netscape friendly form to: http:// -- Michael Froomkin until Aug 6: michael@umlaw.demon.co.uk U.Miami School of Law London, England mfroomki@umiami.ir.miami.edu <-- this will still find me PO Box 248087 Coral Gables, FL 33124-8087 Rain. Sun. Rain. Sun. Rain.