Formal apology (RE: Crypto McCarthyism ...thoughts, gentlemen?)

Eric Murray ericm at lne.com
Sun Feb 11 13:23:16 PST 2001


On Sun, Feb 11, 2001 at 12:35:57AM -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> 
> Well, that's about as nice an apology as I've ever seen on any list, let 
> alone cypherpunks. Aimee's initial message deserves a response. (BTW there 
> is a real Waco, Texas lawyer named Aimee Farr who is interested in these 
> issues, though naturally we can't be certain our correspondent is that person.)
> 
> She asks for our thoughts on this:
> http://www.sociology.org/content/vol002.001/ling.html

Any paper that seriously quotes the Rimm "study" and R.U. Siris is suspect.

[..]

> Since the paper is so flawed, I'm not sure it's worth discussing at length. 
> But, briefly, is crypto as threatening as witches were? Far from it. It -- 
> and its derivative technologies, such as anonymity -- seems to be perceived 
> more as a way to reclaim lost privacy rather than a new and unusual threat. 
> In that sense, it is a conservative technology. (This could change, and 
> certainly the intelligence community is hand-waving about terrorists again, 
> but I doubt it'll have much luck.)

OTOH, there certainly has been another attempt by government
to villify crypto users with the recent spate of articles on Osama
bin Oceania and other terrorists supposed use of crypto and stego.
The Red scare of the 50s was also to a large extent promoted and fanned
into flame by elements of the government.  While there isn't a "moral
boundary crisis" amongst the general public about crypto, there is an
attempt at "vilification" and "patterned labelling" of crypto users by
the government.  And many cypherpunks have predicted the government causing
events similar to "crystallization of the crisis through a dramatic act"
and "appropriation of the appropriate social apparatus and suppression
of critique" of crypto users by the government.
(However, few of those beleive that "and finally restoration of a normal
situation" would then occur.)

The paper doesn't mention the political aspects of either of its
examples (another of it's flaws).  If you can think of "mass hate"
as a politically-motivated inflaming of the masses fears, then
the steps that it describes are remarkably similar to the expected
political response to crypto-anarchy.


-- 
  Eric Murray           Consulting Security Architect         SecureDesign LLC
  http://www.securedesignllc.com                            PGP keyid:E03F65E5





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