Mr. Policeman is Your Friend

[Tim May]

At 3:20 PM -0700 10/1/97, Martin Janzen wrote:
>Electronic Frontier Canada's David Jones (djones at insight.dcss.McMaster.CA)
>posted the following to the EFC mailing list:

>2. If cops can read E-mail, so can the bad guys
>      http://www.efc.ca/pages/media/gazette.24sep97.html

Let's not forget that cops are often the bad guys.

And I don't mean this in a macho, off-the-pigs way. I mean that throughout
history the "cops" are those who have enforced the laws and whims of
tyrants, who have arrested and tortured and executed dissidents and
nonconformists of all flavors, and who were the "King's men" in the times
of the Founders.

Even in more recent decades in the U.S., don't forget it was "cops" who
harassed civil rights workers, who broke up perfectly legal strikes, who
arrested and imprisoned Eugene Debs for speaking out against the draft in
particular and a foolish war, WW 1, in general, and so on. One need only
look to J. Edgar Hoover and his police state measures.

(In fact, the very term "police state" tells us all we need to know about
whether or not "Mr. Policeman is Your Friend" is always, or even most of
the time, true.)

And with full awareness that I am invoking Godwin's Law, the "cops" in
Europe in the 1933-45 period were the enforcers of Hitler's policies.

Here's a list of some folks throughout history and in various regimes who
would likely have reason not to want to escrow their keys with the local
police:

Jews, Catholics, Protestants, atheists, heretics, schismatics,  heathens,
poets, authors, Scharansky, Solzhenitsyn, refuseniks, Chinese dissidents,
students in front of tanks, Branch Davidians, Scientologists, Jesus,
Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, African National Congress, UNITA, Thomas Jefferson,
Patrick Henry, colonial rebels, patriots, Tories, Basque separatists,
Algerian separatists, secessionists, abolitionists, John Brown, draft
opponents, communists, capitalists, imperialist lackeys, anarchists,
Charlie Chaplin, Galileo, Joan of Arc,, Martin Luther,  Martin Luther King,
Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, civil rights workers, Margaret Sanger, birth
control activists, abortionists, anti-abortionists, Michael Milken, Robert
Vesco, Marc Rich, Nixon's Enemies, Hoover's enemies, Clinton's enemies,
Republicans, Democrate, anarchists, labor organizers, pornographers,
readers of "Playboy," viewers of images of women whose faces are uncovered,
Amateur Action, Jock Sturges, violators of the CDA, alt.fan.karla-homulka
readers,  Internet Casino customers, Scientologists, Rosicrucians,
royalists, Jacobins, Hemlock Society activists, Jimmy Hoffa, John L. Lewis,
Cesar Chavez, opponents of United Fruit, land reformers, Simon Bolivar,
Robin Hood, Dennis Banks, American Indian Movement, Jack Anderson, Daniel
Ellsberg, peace activists, Father Berrigan, Mormons, Joseph Smith,
missionaries, Greenpeace, Animal Liberation Front, gypsies, diplomats, U.N.
ambassadors, Randy Weaver, David Koresh, Ayotollah Khomeini, John Gotti,
Papists, Ulstermen, IRA, Shining Path, militia members, tax protestors,
Hindus, Sikhs, Lech Walesa, Polish labor movement, freedom fighters,
revolutionaries, Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, and "suspects"

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."