At 11:22 AM 3/31/96 -0500, Jean-Francois Avon (JFA Technologies, QC, Canada) wrote:

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Dave Del Torto <ddt@lsd.com> wrote:

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At 1:25 am 3/30/96, jim bell wrote:

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We should be particularly suspicious of any hint of a pan-European ban or control of encryption, because that is exactly the kind of development that could usher in a secretly-negotiated treaty that might be argued to be binding on the public. [elided]

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Cypherpunks like Jim need to keep doing their homework before they make such quasi-factual statements.

Jim seems to analyse a situation in terms of broad principles, while Dave seems to focus more on specifics that would disprove Jim.

I agree with the Dave's last phrase in the sense that our models of reality should indeed be rooted in reality.

I hope by now you've seen my reply about the treaty issue. I wasn't particularly focussing on the question of what Europe will do qua Europe, but how the treaty issue could be abused in the US. Here is the section of the US Constitution which is relevant, and which I mentioned by reference before: Article VI ... This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constituion or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. ... I do not believe that this section was intended to mean that the _citizens_ of the US are bound by treaty obligations; That would be illogical, treaties are agreements between governments. Treaties are inherently intended to govern relations with foreign countries, not legal or political circumstances within a particular country. Treaties may AFFECT citizens, such as extradition treaties, immigration/emigration treaties, and passport requirements, but the citizen doesn't "agree" with them. That's evidenced by the fact that treaties are ratified by only the US Senate, the body with two Senators from each state. (The House has proportional representation, based on the population of each state.) The intent, I suggest, was that treaties were supposed to be interpreted as applying to the country, while laws applied to the individual. (Since you're Canadian, and for other non-US readers, I should point out that when the US Constitution was being drafted and debated, citizens were strongly loyal to their state, not the country as a whole, and there was a debate concerning how the representation in the Federal legislature should be divvied up. Obviously, large states wanted proportional representation, small states wanted "n-votes-per-state." The compromise was to have two houses, one of each kind of system. (House=proportional, Senate=2 votes per state.)) Laws have to be passed by both houses to become valid; treaties, on the other hand, only need to be ratified by the Senate. In any case, since laws can be declared unconstitutional I think it's implicit that there can be such a thing as an "unconstitutional treaty," or at least one if declared to be binding on the citizens would be in violation of the Constitution. If, for example, the US government decided that it wanted to take away free speech rights from its citizens, to name an obviously fantastic example, it could arguably write a treaty with, say, Mexico, "agreeing" that free-speech rights will not apply to the citizens of each country. While in practice such an extreme example would never fly and would not be tested (fortunately!) I have read that this section is opportunistically interpreted as if a treaty can be assumed to bind the citizens and not merely the government. I believe there was a treaty in the middle 1960's called something like "Single Issue Treaty on Narcotics" which led directly to a massive re-write of the drug laws in the US. In view of the fact that today, probably 70% of the inmates in US prisons are there on drug charges, it is obvious that this treaty had a long-lasting internal effect, far beyond what a person might have expected at the time. Whether or not this interpretation could still work in today's changed political climate, I don't know, but it's obvious that portions of the US government would dearly love to control encryption in particular and communications in general. Since telecommunications is one of those subjects that is covered by past treaties, and can be expected to be covered by future ones, I believe that American citizens need to be particularly concerned about the government sneaking in laws in the "back door," made by treaty, as opposed to the "front door", made by both the House and Senate and subject to Presidential veto. (Not that I have much respect for the latter, either, but that system is a bit easier to control.) If anything, I think there needs to be an explicit prohibition written into law prohibiting the enforcement of anti-crypto treaty terms on the citizens, or even better a law requiring that all future telecommunications treaties to which the US is a party not contain any regulations or restrictions on crypto. But I'm not hopeful about this.

But considering that in most european country, you are recognized guilty unless proven innocent, it is only non-contradictory to arrive at Jim's conclusions. The basic psycho-epistemology at work there is implying that.

There is probably much about Europe which is superior to the US, but they do have a problem with social and political stratification given their long history. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com