Personally, I think that this is required reading. Practically, I'd like to think that most of you folks will comment and edit this document to the point where each and every one of us will be proud to sign our _names_ to it. Please forgive me for adapting a consecrated public document for this venue, however I feel that this is the best adaptive vehicle for this statement. #include_statement THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FROM GOVERNMENTALLY IMPOSED CRYPTOGRAPHY Proposed to Cypherpunks-at-large, May 20, 1993 When, in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to disregard and challenge the communicative and neo-political bands which have connected them with their Government, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the opposition. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Communications should be designed equally and, that they are endowed by their creators with certain unalienable technical aspects, that among these, are Privacy, Communications Liberalism, and the pursuit of Cryptographic Freedom. That, to secure these rights to publicly available crypto, the Government which was once instituted among Men, and derived their just powers from the consent of the governed, that, whenever any Form of Government once became destructive of these ends, it was once the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Communications Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind is more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evidences a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government abuses and to provide new Guards for their future communications security.--- Such has been the patient sufferance of these Cryptographic soldiers; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to attempt to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present President of The United States of America is a brief history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny and imposition over individual rights to communicative privacy. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. He has implemented a policy which may possibly usurp the citizens privacy in electronic communications, which at least, will indeed submit private communications to unjust scrutiny under his agencies surveillance. He has attempted to impose these standards without academic or public scrutiny. We have not been wanting in attentions to our cryptographic practices; this is true. It does not, however, indicate that we are guilty of crimes of any sort. We have alerted our governmental representatives, from time to time, of attempts made by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our professional and private idealisms. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our united objection, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. We, therefore, the Representatives of the Cryptographic partners resident in the computing networks and establishments, in General Consensus, Assembled, appealing to the legislative bodies of the United States of America for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Names, and by Authority of the good People of the Networks, solemnly publish and declare, That the computer community is, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independent of governmentally imposed cryptographic restrictions; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the proposals implemented by the National Security Agency, The National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Clipper purveyors by-and-large, and that all political connection between them and the United States of America, and ought to be, totally dissolved: and that, as Free and Independent communicators, they have absolute rights to private electronic communications without Governmentally imposed sanctions which may unethically submit their communications to Governmental scrutiny. And, for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our sacred Honor. Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?