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

[jim bell]

----- Original Message -----
From: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>
To: Tim May <tcmay at got.net>; Canadian Cryptography Mailing List
<crypto-canada at greatvideo.com>
Cc: Cypherpunks Mailing List <cypherpunks at cyberpass.net>
Sent: Saturday, October 07, 2000 22:55 PM
Subject: Re: Comments on and about e-privacy in Canada


> 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).

And there's the fact that laws against such things usually either explicitly
except government ("legitimate law-enforcement needs", <ptooey!>) actions,
or are basically ignored when a cop (term used generically) violates them.
Such laws lead to a false sense of security among the sheeple who aren't
aware that the biggest fox around has a gate-key.  It also deters
manufacturers of secure hardware and software because their target audience
is falsely placated.

Why, for example, do secure, encrypted telephones not yet exist in an EASILY
useable form?   ("Go to Radio Snack, buy the box, take it home, plug it
in.")  Technically, it's quite possible:  1 Gigaflop DSP's are available and
should be far more than necessary, 28K bidirectional modems are dirt-cheap,
etc.

Jim Bell