CDR: Re: Treatment of subjugated people (and bagpipes)

[Steven Furlong]

Ray Dillinger wrote:
> "Poor Man's Crypto", possibly even better than digital crypto,
> may consist in creating an artificial language together, and
> then using it whenever you don't want to be eavesdropped on.

cf my remarks and questions on the use of Lojban for a personal log.
Lojban is an artificial language with a user base of several hundred.
I started a thread in mid-July. The consensus, from this list and some
law-oriented newsgroups, is that you can't be forced to translate a
journal written in a non-English language. Possibly you can't even be
forced to identify the language it's written in.

The matter of whether you can be forced to either decrypt encrypted
files or to provide the key is more confused: I got approximately
equal numbers of responses saying you can't be forced to decrypt and
saying you can be so forced.

I have not run either of those questions past lawyers that I've paid,
so the responses may be worth no more than I paid for them.


SRF
-- 
Steve Furlong, Computer Condottiere     Have GNU, will travel
   518-374-4720     sfurlong at acmenet.net