Real issue of crypto controls: security or taxation loss?

[Lucky Green]

At 09:34 PM 9/14/97 -0500, jf_avon at citenet.net wrote:
>Do they indulge in statistical efficiency or do they want 99.9999+% 
>efficiency at their "filtering"?  I'd say if they "filter" only, say, 
>90% of all communications and an Oklahoma City plan passes by in the 
>10% remaining, it won't be good enough for them.

There are several fallacies in this paragraph. I'll address two of them.

First, you assume that terrorist actions are bad for the State. That is
incorrect. Terroism, unless widely supported by the population, is of great
benefit to the State. It helps to speed the passing of restrictive
legislation. If you doubt this, please do some research on the laws passed
in response to Oklahoma City in the US and the relevant laws passed
throughout the EU during the late seventies and early eighties.

Second, you assume that it would become widely know that the incriminating
message was missed by the monitors. This is also incorrect, unless the
monitors themselves choose to reveal the fact to support their future
requests for increased monitoring capablities.

The lack of positive identification of all participants on the Internet is
a displeasing hole to the surveillance state. Only an Internet driver
license can help patch this hole.


--Lucky Green <shamrock at netcom.com>
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  DES is dead! Please join in breaking RC5-56.
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