From: "James K. Huggins" <huggins@eecs.umich.edu>
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 93 11:38:17 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Clipper Chip report on 700 Club today (Wednesday)
Message-ID: <199310221834.AA27149@quip.eecs.umich.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


Phil Karn (karn@qualcomm.com) writes:
 
> If I hadn't seen the show with my own eyes, I never would have
> believed it. The Religious Right, so ready to mind everyone else's
> personal business and to reshape the government in its own image,
> opposes something that would make it easier for the government to
> control the private lives of its citizens. 

Let's be honest, though ... the "Non-Religious Left" is interested
in the same thing (though in different ways).  Just about everybody
in politics wants to change something or other.

> Of course, the Religious Right is at odds with the current government,
> what with talk of using the federal racketeering laws against
> anti-abortion demonstrators.  So perhaps they can be forgiven for
> their current anti-government stance.  

It ain't just governments that oppose the religious right.  There are 
a lot of moves on college campuses lately to kick conservative
religious groups off campus because they aren't PC.  I can easily
see a time when having cryptography might be very useful to me if
the administration at my university starts grepping my e-mail
to see if my group meets the latest PC test.  

Sure, the US government tends to like Christian folks right now.
But there are lots of governments around that don't -- ask people
who live in Muslim countries where being a Christian is illegal,
punishable by death as heresy.  Any applications for cryptography there?

> And there's supreme irony in the right to encryption and the right to
> abortion both being founded in the same basic concept: personal
> privacy.  It all depends on whose ox is being gored, I guess.

The problem ain't with privacy ... it's with what do you with privacy.
Should we all have microphones installed in our homes because the
privacy of my house out in the country means that I can beat my wife
and no-one will hear her scream?  The problem isn't that my house
is private ... the problem is that I'm a jerk.  So make being a jerk
illegal and forget the microphones.

Disclaimer: I don't have a house or a wife, and 4 out of 5 officemates
don't think I'm a jerk ...

Jim Huggins (huggins@eecs.umich.edu)