New crypto bill to be introduced

Declan B. McCullagh declan+ at CMU.EDU
Fri Mar 29 14:27:14 PST 1996


Two observations:

* Jim Bell would be unduly suspicious if _anyone_ introduced a crypto
bill in Congress. I'm not surprised that here on conspiracypunks someone
would be raising alarums without knowing what they're talking about.

* Jim Bell says we're "overdoing it on this 'List of Shame' thing." Not
at all -- we're proud to be on it! And you, Jim Bell, are one of my
primary suspects for authorship.

-Declan



Excerpts from cypherpunks: 28-Mar-96 Re: New crypto bill to be i.. by
jim bell at pacifier.com 
> While this does sound like progress, I'm suspicious.   Peter Junger's 
> analysis raised serious doubt as to the ability of bill to open up the 
> crypto export market as it purported to.  
>  
> And where, exactly, did this these changes come from?  Who was consulted?  
> What recommendations were NOT taken?
>  
>  
> >We have put our "List of Shame" numbers on our nametags.
> >-Declan
>  
> You're overdoing it on this "List of Shame" thing.  You don't know 
> who actually made those anonymous postings, and it's been observed that 
> those names seem to correspond nicely with an NSA-hate list.  It would not 
> take a great deal of imagination to conclude that the NSA was motivated to 
> de-focus our anger at the Leahy bill and replace it with a great deal of 
> back-stabbing commentary.  (If that was the intent, it succeeded...)
>  
> On the other hand, I've also noticed that there hasn't been a lot of 
> specific analysis of the Leahy bill in the last few weeks, and my suggestion 
> that the Leahy bill be informally re-written to address Junger's objections 
> (as well as my own, and Tim May's, etc) has not resulted in a great deal of 
> repair work.  Now, miraculously, a replacement bill appears that includes 
> SOME repairs.  (obviously, we have to wait to hear how most of it
comes out...)
>  
>  
> I get the impression that we are being sequentially offered ice cream cones 
> with decreasing amounts of poison in them, in the hopes that at some point 
> we'll bite.  It seems to me that whoever is writing these bills should be 
> willing to make a statement about what his goals are, and who he's talking 
> to as he crafts them, and what changes he was UNwilling to include.







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