US Congress uses tragedy to steal privacy

[Warren Togami]

Essentially what the US Government is proposing is to outlaw the use of
already widespread cryptography, and only allow the use of crypto with
government backdoors.  This is completely ineffectively, because this does
NOT stop the rest of the world from continuing to use cryptography.  Would
terrorists upgrade their crypto software to the US Gov version?

These laws would need to be inacted in all countries around the world - NOT
GOING TO HAPPEN.  It would take an opressive campaign of the likes "book
burning" to remove the knowledge of crypto, with strict laws and punishments
for anyone to reimplement software using already well established
cryptographic theory.  Most of these effective cryptographic methods are so
simple, that millions of mathematicians, programmers or even students around
the world RIGHT NOW could write an algorithm from scratch to reimplement it
if necessary.  This would make the law unenforcable without supression of
academia and the burning of millions of books worldwide.

Summary: They want to outlaw the use of a certain type of MATH.  Can you say
loss of liberty?

If this bill were to pass, cryptography research in the United States would
almost illegal, making both academic research and commerce unfavorable in
the United States.  The French passed a law like this a while back, and they
ended up using their government backdoors to spy on financial and business
transactions to give unfair benefits to French companies who could quickly
outbid foreign companies.  Soon later, the law was repealed because foreign
business began to avoid France for this reason.  In this same way, if this
law were to be passed in the United States our economy will surely be
destroyed into recession.

The scary thing is that the government and media will portray this as
"necessary", because it will protect the US from "Terrorists who use
cryptography."  The great majority of population are completely ignorant,
and will be made fearful by the media's description, and would support this
bill.  Only mathematician, engineering and computer science academics and
professionals will know the truth.  Time will tell if they will make an
impact in this political battle.

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
--Benjamin Franklin, 1759

----- Original Message -----
From: "Deven Phillips" <dphillips at viata.com>
To: "Linux & Unix Advocates & Users" <luau at list.luau.hi.net>
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 11:30 AM
Subject: [luau] US Congress uses tragedy to steal privacy


> All,
>
> For your consideration, the US Gov't is introducing a bill to require all
> encryption within the US to have a backdoor for government agencies to use
> for intelligence purposes. If the idea of this infuriates you as much as
it
> does me, please do your part by e-mailing/writing your representatives and
> telling them not to allow our rights to be stripped away. Tell them that
> turning America into a police state is letting the terrorists win by
> destroying our way of life.
>
> Thank You,
>
> Deven Phillips, CISSP, LCA
> Network Architect
> Viata, Inc.