Next EFF-Austin General Meeting : Cryptography

[David Smith]

                              Cryptography
         The Language Our Government Doesn't Want You to Learn

                       EFF-Austin General Meeting
                 Monday, October 16th, 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
                   La Madelein Inn, 3418 North Lamar

The rights of individuals to live freely in a democracy versus the
powers society grants law enforcement to fight crime is one of the
longest running and one of the most contested debates in American
history.

Cryptography -- the ability to communicate in an encoded language -- is
merely the latest incarnation. This general meeting is designed to
provide an overview of the issues as well as an update on current events
of the last six months.

Areas of discussion include

        -- what is being called the "CLIPPER II" proposal -- the Clinton
        administration is willing to ease export restrictions on high
        strength cryptographic algorithms if an escrow decryption key is
        available where law enforcement officials have access to it.
        Speaker : David Smith, President EFF-Austin

        -- the recent cracking of a Netscape cryptography algorithm
        advertised as "secured" and it's implications for the
        development of electronic commerce on the Internet. One function
        of cryptography is that it provides a unique identifier. If you
        can't be reasonably sure that the person at the other end of the
        connection is who you think it is, just how much money are you
        will to risk in an electronic transaction?
        Speaker : Brian Combs, President Austin World Wide Web Users
        Group; Austin Web Publishing; and Board member, EFF-Austin.
        
        -- Pretty Good Privacy.  What is PGP, how does it work, who is
        Phil Zimmerman, and what is the legal status of all of this?
        Copies of PGP will be made available, as well as laptops to use
        for generating keys and keyrings.
        Speaker : Jim McCoy, Austin Cypherpunks.

Other topics are sure to be discussed; this is just a starting point for
discussion.
           
EFF-Austin is a local grass roots organization created to protect civil
liberties in cyberspace.  We provide educational forums on the social,
legal, and political consequences of cyberspace.

For further information, contact EFF-Austin President David Smith via
e-mail (bladex at bga.com).