From: "Perry E. Metzger" <pmetzger@lehman.com>
Date: Wed, 2 Mar 94 04:34:22 PST
To: tytso@athena.mit.edu (Theodore Ts'o)
Subject: Re: Dorothy Denning
In-Reply-To: <9403020528.AA26183@tsx-11.MIT.EDU>
Message-ID: <9403021233.AA21564@andria.lehman.com>
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Theodore Ts'o says:
> I can imagine that back then, the Catholic church must have been deeply
> opposed to letting the "hoi polloi" access to books, and access to
> learning.  Think of how it would disrupt the social order!!!

Don't look back to the Catholics, Ted. The Russians and Chinese
restricted access to printing presses, because they knew that they
would permit the overthrow of the government.

Dorothy and all the rest are Statists. They are no different from the
Russians and the rest. The Communists wanted to restrict access to
printing presses because they felt them to be a danger to their
society, and Denning and the rest want to restrict cryptography for
exactly the same reason. They have no love for the constitution --
they believe in "balancing" constitutional rights, "giving up" rights
for "security" and all the rest. They THINK they have love for the
constitution. They THINK they are patriots. In fact, they are no
different in ANY of the arguments they make from fascists or
communists. If Denning knew how much of what she said sounds exactly
like stuff coming out of Pravda from the 1960s, she'd probably either
flip or go into denial. I used to read translations of Pravda a lot
as an original source for researching Soviet history. Her stuff also
bears an uncanny resemblence to public statements made by Nazi leaders
at various times about dangerous things the public couldn't get their
hands on, and how various rights needed to be restricted in order to
"protect" the public.

> The important point that you make is that the cat really *is* out of the
> bag; I am just concerned that the government, in a futile attempt to try
> to stuff the cat back in, does perhaps fatal damage to all of our civil
> rights in its desperation.

People forget about the fact that rights are not just a nicety, the
way Denning thinks. They are critical to our survival. The U. S. is
not a nice place that happens to grant rights because it has a
benevolent government -- it has a benevolent government and is a nice
place because it grants rights. This crucial distinction is lost on
those who would trade rights for safety -- the Dennings of the world
believe safety is a commodity that may be purchased with rights.

John Gilmore has noted that once you have replaced all a government's
mechanisms with mechanisms that would be needed for a fascist
government to run the country, fascism can be achived by a mere change
in attitude by the governors. Denning and the rest don't grok that.
They think "this is America; it can never happen here." My relatives
who perished in the holocaust all said "this is Germany; the land of
Goethe and Schiller; one of the greatest intellectual centers on
earth; how can this happen here?" People never ask the distinction
that made the U.S. government stable where others fall every few
decades. They just assume it to be a fact of nature -- that they can
play with the basis of that fact all they like without making the fact
itself disappear. Cause and effect do not work that way.

> Look at how civil forfeiture has been used
> to completely strip someone of his properties, without any due process.
> Look at the RICO act, and the truely scary things that you can do with
> it; it was originally applied against the Big Bad Mob, but it's turning
> out to have much broader applications.

Once all telecommunications in this country are instantly
interceptable; once all the FBI Digital Telephony crap and the Clipper
crap are merged together, any fascist takeover could immediately start
bugging all phones at will. They could immediately determine who their
enemies were talking to at will. They could trace all economic
transactions at will. (They want to be able to do that, too -- look at
FinCen, also an idea "to protect us".) In short, this is a major tool
that they would want.  It looks so much like the premises behind the
East German or Bulgarian phone network ran on that we should ask
ourselves WHY.

> So if the cat really is out of the bag, then the government should give
> up on this ill-conceived Clipper abortion as soon as possible.

It is, of course, already way too late for them to do anything. The
damage they can do before they realize this might, however, be
extreme.

Perry