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

[Aimee Farr]

Declan said:

>society has instead adopted and then accepted the Internet. It's difficult
to be
> repulsed by something when you use it to share baby pictures with
> grandparents.

Yes, and we are starting to regulate the hell out of it. Outside of a
generic "Internet" sense....crypto is viewed as more threatening -- not
simply a conduit, but a means. The next domestic terrorist kaboom! is going
to have "bought to you by crypto" stenciled all over it by the US guvmint.
Our demographics don't speak of technosophisticates.

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.

I agree, but you yourself stated that the average American isn't that
concerned about privacy and won't purchase privacy enhancing technologies.
(In a general privacy sense, I don't see a lot of "privacy reclamation." I
do see a lot of notice provisions -- the functional equivalent of placing
99% of Americans in a social-adhesion contract.) I don't think it's
conservative. I think it is a new and unusual threat - to the majority of
Americans.

(This could change, and
> certainly the intelligence community is hand-waving about
> terrorists again,

And the entertainment industry, a power-export, is right behind them.
Already we have an attempt to make crime-by-crypto cause for enhanced
punishment. Also, the guvmint is puppeting economic espionage/national
security in terms of crypto-enabled pirating. Add in the
terrorist-porn-crypto triangle... Smells like stigmatization to me.

Of course, you have all watched this battle for many years, so you have a
longevity of insight that I don't have. Probably just the same-ole-same-ole
to you, while it seems more dramatic to me.

-aimee.farr at pobox.com