Who knows how well it plays, but my faxed letter to Moakley on crupto export took a different approach from my usual privacy tirades. I tried to (calmly) argue that we need strong cryptography for fundamental engineering reasons. Data is so damn flexible. This is both good and bad. The bad is that data can be capricious and flighty. If our physical world were to allow objects to appear out of no where and disappear again, transmorgraphy beyond recognition, or become massively duplicated in unknown locations, we would find it disconcerting--to say the least. We would go to considerable lengths to keep physical objects reassuringly in one place. In fact, with some physical objects that often do carpiciously vanish, we go to inconvienient extremes in hopes we can prevent the vanishing. Look at some of the anti-theft devices people will put on their cars. There are good engineering approaches which can force data to behave itself. Many of them involve cryptography. Our government's restrictions on crypto limit our ability to build reliable computer systmems. We need strong crypto for basic engineering reasons. Note, my fax to Moakley was phrased (and spelled?) considerably different from this posting. I am still wondering how best to make this argument. Something I want to avoid is too strong a reliance on "pulling rank": "We are professionals, we need these tools to do our jobs, don't try to understand the reasons.". Just using words like "engineering" smacks of that enough, let's leave it at that. One thing I like about this approach is that is avoids the kneejerk positions the word "privacy" prompts. -kb, the Kent who tries to sound reasonable -- Kent Borg +1 (617) 776-6899 kentborg@world.std.com kentborg@aol.com Proud to claim 29:45 hours of TV viewing so far in 1994!