Several people wrote:

I wrote:

...

ObCrypto policy: Was anyone else besides me amazed by the guy from Deloitte-Touche at the Internet Privacy Coalition luncheon last week? I mean, he all but advocated violent overthrow of the government. [...]

For the benefit of those of us who were not at this luncheon (probably not even in the same country), could you please say more about this, Marshall? What was the subject? What _did_ the DT speaker say, exactly?

After a while, I stopped taking notes, because I was so astounded at what he was saying. (Maybe someone with more complete notes could post a better summary) But, here a brief overview of the luncheon: Last Wednesday, January 29th, the Internet Privacy Coalition had a "policy lunch" in San Francisco. It was in one of the hotels hosting the RSA conference, and at the same time that the conference was breaking for lunch, so it was easy for attendees to "switch lunches". The speakers (as I remember, apologies to any I miss) were: Whit Diffie John Gilmore Kenneth Bass (counsel in Karn vs. Dept of State) Herb Lin (who ran the NRC staff for the crypto study) Marc Rotenberg William Hugh Murray (Deloitte & Touche) and a couple others that I missed, as I left early. Mr. Murray gave a long, impassioned speech. He said that the government is going to crack down on domestic possession and use of crypto, that they were looking to increase their wiretapping capabilities 100-fold, and so on. He was very emphatic about not trusting anything that the government says, and that once they got their "foot in the door", that they would seek to expand their abilities to regulate, etc, etc. He advocated deployment of strong crypto. He insisted that there was no way the government could stop the export of strong crypto. He exhorted people to refuse to obey the ITAR/EAR regulations, and to lobby their congresscritters to get the PRO-CODE bill passed. It wasn't really what he said that amazed me, because I had heard most of it (in bits and pieces) before. It was presenting it all in a package, in an emotional manner, by an elderly, conseratively dressed accountant who was representing a large corporation whose job it is to help people obey the government. [ My father was an accountant. He worked for Deloitte-Touche, in fact. I don't expect accountants to be passionate about government regs, and especially not to advocate disobediance. Maybe that's why this affected me so strongly. ] -- Marshall Marshall Clow Aladdin Systems <mailto:mclow@mailhost2.csusm.edu> Warning: Objects in calendar are closer than they appear.