CDR: Re: Comments on and about e-privacy in Canada

Declan McCullagh declan at well.com
Sat Oct 7 22:55:16 PDT 2000


At 16:38 10/6/2000 -0700, Tim May wrote, in response to Robert Guerra:
>Again you show yourself to be uncritical of these claims. You don't "get it."
>[...]
>The solution is not a regimen of data privacy laws but tecnologies to 
>enable consumers to remain private. Those who "give permission" for their 
>refrigerator to contact some outside party have made their choice.

Right. There are solid principled reasons to oppose government regulations 
on what people can and can't do with information. Let them make up their 
own minds instead. There are also economic arguments, as Richard Epstein 
recently spoke about (http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,38893,00.html).

But there are even better, IMHO, technological reasons to oppose such 
government rules. As technology advances and more data become available for 
sale or exchange, it will be very difficult for a Canadian/European 
regulatory framework to reasonably exist. Cypherpunkish technology will 
create underground markets, anonymous distribution methods, and so on, and 
the only way to enforce such regulations will be for the Feds/Mounties to 
take drastic steps. (For instance, strong anonymity is an emergent property 
of a distributed network combined with strong encryption. Restricting 
strong anonymity means key escrow.)

I do hope Robert thinks through this. Or maybe this is another example of 
cypherpunk thinking not meshing well with Canada. Austin of ZKS spoke 
Wednesday here in DC, and his comments are relayed to me from another 
speaker who is sympathetic to his position:

>Austin H. made an interesting point this morning
>at the WSJ Tech Summit. He pointed out that for
>all the grumbling about government rules, no
>hi-tech CEO would seriously recommend abolishing
>the SEC.

Perhaps. But some cypherpunks might argue for it, in the stronger case, or 
in the weaker, simply argue that the SEC will become less and less relevant.

-Declan





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