From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@snark.imsi.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 94 04:12:22 PDT
To: nelson@crynwr.com (Russell Nelson)
Subject: Re: spooks on cypherpunks
In-Reply-To: <m0pwh1T-000IDpC@crynwr>
Message-ID: <9404291112.AA21177@snark.imsi.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Russell Nelson says:
>    The NSA will either adapt or die -- it seems to be trying to die right
>    now rather than adapt, but thats not our problem.
> 
> Cautionary note here, Perry.  People who feel that have no choices
> often don't care if the only choice they see is a bad one.  Hitler
> [yeah, yeah, I know] convinced the German people that all their
> choices were bad, but his was best.  They killed a few people -- it
> was in all the papers at the time.

Naturally, they won't take things lying down. It is certainly in our
interest to make sure that they don't cause trouble, especially bad
trouble, during their demise. (Actually, I don't think they will stop
existing, just that they will have to accept that their work IS going
to be hard from now on and leave it at that.)

My point is merely that they have no real choice in the matter -- just
as a congressman falling out a window can shout at the law of gravity
all he wants, and threaten legal action, to no effect, so the NSA can
pretend that it can restrict the growth of private sector cryptography
but it is already too late. You can't stop people from learning
something they already know.

Perry