US law - World Law - Secret Banking

[Hal]

From: Black Unicorn <unicorn at schloss.li>
> What has consistently alarmed me is the United States trend of extending
> her own moral and ethical standards world wide.  Granted the United States
> is the foremost world economic power, but the power to control markets and
> the political power to invade the sovereignty of other states are two
> distinct issues.  The United States is, in one form or another, attempting
> to homogonize the legal systems of the world to comply with her own
> concept of what is "right" or "fair."  This is disturbing.

I was encouraged to read the description by former NSA lawyer Stewart
Baker of Japan's attitudes towards crypto policy (from the URL posted
here by wb8foz at nrk.com, http://www.us.net/~steptoe/276915.htm).  We can
all take heart in what Baker finds alarming:

   In the United States and Europe, encryption policy is formed by a mix
   of interests. Advocates of business, national security agencies, and
   more recently the police -- all play a large role in the policy
   debate. This policy triumvirate is difficult to see in Japan. For a
   variety of reasons, commercial interests are predominant in Japanese
   government thinking about encryption. Time after time during my
   interviews, I was reminded that Japan was an island nation that has
   not had to defend itself for fifty years and so has not had to
   confront the national security concerns associated with encryption.
   And Japanese police face severe political and constitutional
   constraints on wiretapping, so the prospect of losing this criminal
   investigative tool seems not to be as troubling to the Japanese
   government as to the United States and many European nations.
   
   [...]
   
   All in all, the emerging Japanese consensus on cryptography could pose
   a major challenge to U.S. (and perhaps European) government hopes of
   striking a compromise between commercial and governmental interests
   with respect to cryptographic policy. If Japan puts the weight of its
   government and industry behind strong, unescrowed encryption,
   competitive pressure will quickly doom any attempt to influence this
   technology through export controls and standard-making. Governments
   will be forced to choose between overt regulation in the Russian and
   French manner or laissez-faire policies of the sort that now prevail
   in the domestic markets of countries like the United States, Great
   Britain, and Germany.
   
I love the description of the choice facing the government, between
laissez-faire policies versus the kind of system prevailing in Russia.
This is a remarkably clear and frank description of the policy directions
which are available.

Hal