Tzafrir Cohen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > One note: people there seem to be quite clueless regarding the > distribution of encryption technologies: > > The legitlators accept the position of the Security Forces according to > which "limiting the use of encryption and limiting the distribution of > sophisticated security systems will help the defense organizations to > intercept messages containing information that can lead to to the > circumvention of terrorist acts. On the other hand, giving encryption > technologies to terrorists will increase the number of casualties in > crimes that can't be prevented. > > Anybody else senses here a cheap use of the terror (in greek: fear) > threat?
Cheap or not is not the point. The point is that it is mostly pointless. Encryption technologies *are* available, and widely used. The government cannot prevent terrorists or criminals from getting and using them. The only thing that can be done about it is outlaw them. Obviously, it will hurt the privacy of ordinary law-abiding citizens like you and me. It will not hurt terrorists and criminals, because they are on the path of breaking more important laws anyway. The argument that once government carnivores detect encrypted communications between Alice and Bob (who do not use email anonymizers) the security services will be able to arrest, prosecute, and jail Alice and Bob, thus preventing a terrorist act the two could have been plotting, seems to me theoretically valid but rather weak in practice. If the only thing that Alice and Bob wanted was keeping their affair secret from Alice's husband, then we have a situation where two people are put into jail for that (if Alice and Bob are not proven to be terrorists, but encryption is a crime, then they will have to be convicted for trying to protect their privacy). Similarly, linux-il subscriber Carol won't be able to telecommute any longer, because her employer would be unwilling to use an unencrypted channel for fear of leakage of valuable information, and wouldn't be willing to use an encrypted channel for fear of running afoul of the law. I am afraid this line of reasoning is difficult to explain to legislators, or indeed to any audience sufficiently remote from this list's core population. That is why what you call "cheap use of the terror threat" works. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] ================================================================= "... Of theoretical physics and programming, programming embodied the greater intellectual challenge." [E.W.Dijkstra, 1930 - 2002.] ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
