crypto, why not catching on?

[William A. Kennedy]

                         internet: kennned09 at ssw.alcoa.com

This is a response to Tim May's well-thought-out piece on "why cryptography has
not caught on."

I think cryptography _has_ caught on.  There are people in the crypto debate
now that weren't there two years ago;  perhaps even one.  I think we should not
measure the commitment to the cryptography debate buy counting the amount of
encrypted traffic .  There just isn't that much that people send that needs to
be encrypted.  Our debate should, and does, focus on the rights of people to
have the technical tools to insure the privacy of messages and other
communication that they deem to be worthy of special handling.  Thanks to
people like Phil Zimmermann and Romana Michado, and many others I'm sure that I
don't even know about, we have those technical tools and should now be fighting
for the right to use them.

Interestingly enough, I sent a message to Phil and got a response from his
vacation program.  In it he tells us that, if we think that our message to him
needs to be encrypted, then please allow more time to get it read.