One-way pagers are a great anonymous way to signal, especially since Web interfaces were offered. With coded messages, originated from public access terminals and disguised as phone numbers, a lot of command and control is practical. At 07:32 PM 9/26/2001 -0700, Tim May wrote: On Wednesday, September 26, 2001, at 06:15 PM, Nilsphone@aol.com wrote:

In a message dated 2001-09-26 17:21 Pacific Daylight Time, freematt@coil.com writes:

"Between Cato arguing for victim disarmament and Reason arguing that "right to liberty is preceded by the right to life," I say we just kill them all and let Rand sort them out." If you find Ms. Young's comments against encryption disturbing please write to Nick Gillespie <gillespie@reason.com> Editor-in-Chief of Reason Magazine and David Nott <davidn@reason.org> President, Reason Foundation.]

I think Reason got it wrong. Crypto technology might simplify a terrorist's life a little, that is all. If there are no secure channels, terrorists can meet in person. The "GO" order can be done in the clear, "lets go" needs no encryption. Alternatively, low volume comm between people who know each other, and can meet beforehand, can easily be done using one time pad, which are drop dead easy to use, foolproof (as long as you dont lose or re-use them) etc, but not suitable for mass communication. I can write a one-time-pad program in minutes that does it all for you. You need a source for the pads, GM-tubes are best, rooms full of lava lamps and a digital camera have been used. Not very hard, can be set up at a central location, once, and then the pads distributed by hand. (This latter is a must and the catch in mass communications.)

Nils Andersson (long time Reason subscriber, from the beginning in the 70-s)

They fucking DID meet in person! There is not one iota, not one shred, of evidence that Atta and and his 20 or so co-conspirators used "crypto" in any form! (Including image file steganography, the form I invented in 1989-90 and which Kevin Kelly profiled in his book "Out of Control," based on interviews in 1992. I mention this because several journalists have been writing b.s stories aoubt Osama using "steganography, files hidden in images.' B.S.) And even had Atta and Company used crypto, which there is no evidence whatsoever of, this would be no more justification for "key escrow" or "backdoors" than the use of curtains by Al Capone to hide his activities was grounds for "transparency escrow" modes in curtains or for banning sealed envelopes. Most crime takes place out of sight of law enforcement. So? Atta and his co-conspirators met in apartments, motel rooms, and sent overnight letters. Unless the bozos at Reason are arguing for opening of all mail, for microphones in motel rooms, for "1984" levels of apartment surveillance, there is nothing that could have been done to stop the planning. This is all just very basic stuff, written about by some of us in the mid-80s. That so many journalists are just now "discovering" the crypto issue is symptomatic of our times.