From: Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 94 12:33:34 PDT
To: CYPHERPUNKS@toad.com
Subject: Illegal Acts & Crypto
Message-ID: <199407011931.AA15203@panix.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


The dumbest question of all:

"But if you aren't doing anything illegal, why do you need crypto? (or 
have to worry about stop-and-frisk, or need legal due process 
protections.)  Only lawbreakers have to worry if their privacy is 
violated."

Great thought.  Now tell me what will be illegal in 40 years in all the 
jurisdictions in which I will live.  In addition, tell me what 
(legal) behaviors or characteristics of mine will nonetheless cause me to 
lose social approbation//jobs//friends//etc in all of the societies in 
which I will live.

Statistics say I've got 40 years left.  Forty years ago, smoking was a 
virtue and sodomy a vice.  Twenty-five years ago, money laundering was as 
legal as church on a Sunday and every bank in America offered defacto 
secret bank accounts.  Given the speed with which things are changing, in 
twenty-five more years, participating on a crypto mailing list like this 
could be punished by the death penalty under the Krypto Kingpins Kontrol 
Act of 2005.  Or if things go another way, advocates of government key 
escrow systems could be subject to outlawry and instant public "vector 
control measures" if they accidentally wander onto the land of the wrong 
proprietary community.  You never know.

In the last 200 years of human history, people have been killed at one 
time or another in one place or another simply because they had any human 
characteristic you could name or indulged in any human behavior.  You name 
the characteristic or behavior and I bet I can name the time when people 
somewhere were died because of it.

Giving up your privacy is too great a risk.  What do you gain.

Besides, if we are all equal then the rulers are equal to us and we don't 
have to give up our autonomy to them.

DCF
--- WinQwk 2.0b#1165