Cypherpunks and terrorism

[cubic-dog]

> Many people have made this point, but it is so fundamentally wrong that
> it's hard to believe that anyone takes it seriously.

No one really does.
 
> Paper, and metal, and knives, and airplanes, and all the other things
> which have been compared to anonymity tools, are different in one major
> respect: it would be an inconceivable hardship to ban them.
> 
> Can we really say the same thing about cryptography?  About steganography
> tools?  About the anonymous mail services which bin Laden has been
> reported to have used (yesterday on TV it was mentioned several times)?

What you are really talking about when you talk about cryptography is
privacy, is individuality, is self determination. 

Certainly commerce wouldnt' grind to halt if these trivialities were
dispensed with. After all, Commerce really is what it is all about
isn't it? With the supreme court of the us making judgements on what
is good for the consumer, now that the old term taxpayer,or even
the arcane term citizen no longer applies. 
 
> Would commerce grind to a halt if we didn't have anonymous remailers?
> Of course not.  The same with PGP and SSL and other crypto technologies
> that are available to everyone.
> 
> The fact is, crypto as we know it is a luxury.  It didn't even exist ten
> years ago.  

Many things "didn't exist" 10 years ago. The real ability to completely
and totally enumerate and track every single transaction and action of
every single person and store them to be used if not right away to punish
immoral acts, at least keep them on file so that it can be done when 
the incarceration system gets streamlined. 

I've heard many calls for complete biometric id systems to be put in
place for airline access over the last few days. With such a system, why
just use it for gov building access and airports? Why not for banks,
7/11 phone cards, groceries, rent payment etc ad whatever. As more and
more trangressions become felonised, and more and crimes become
federalised, soon we should be able to deny anything to anyone on
pretty much a whim. Governments go bad. Many believe governments 
are bad period. Hence, crypto. It is the only technological response
to a technological society.

> None of the crypto tools we use did.  We can hardly make a
> case that banning or restricting access to them will send us back into
> the stone age.
> 
> Please, let's end these spurious arguments that providers of crypto tools
> are no different than the people who make the metal in the airplane wings.
> There's a big difference, which anyone with an ounce of sense can see.
> Banning airplanes is not an option.  Banning crypto is.