From: George A. Gleason <gg@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 92 02:26:03 PST
To: simsong@next.cambridge.ma.us
Subject: Re: (fwd) A Silver Bullet to Limit Crypto?
Message-ID: <199211131024.AA12677@well.sf.ca.us>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Responding to Simsong's critique of my comparison with voter registration.

Point well taken.  Perhaps a comparison with xerox machines in the old USSR
would be more apt: the image of the copier in the guarded room with a loyal
party cadre at the door, having all comers sign a book saying what their
business is using the copier, and showing the material they'd be copying.
The KGB of course was interested in preventing "crime" such as the spreading
of anti-Soviet propaganda.  Now we would say, oh that's not crime, it's just
speech.  Exactly: enciphered text is just speech, and if an actual crime is
organised over a communications medium, the crime itself is the thing to
prosecute, not the speech.  

The parallel of state officials controlling access to communications devices
seems to be pretty straightforward to me.  But would it fly on Main
Street...?

-gg