From: nelson@crynwr.com (Russell Nelson)
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 94 07:42:04 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Security is not free
Message-ID: <m0qOPCa-000I8LC@crynwr.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


I think that a lot of people have forgotten that security is not free.
Sometimes the cost is economic, sometimes it is mental.  Even using
encryption with GNU Emacs's mailcrypt package is not free, because it
takes time to verify that you're using signatures and encryption and
keys correctly.  And, without a certain amount of paranoia, you're
going to do something stupid.

I think the NSA is forgetting that security is not free.  They're
restricting American companies from exporting encryption.  Yes, this
increases America's security by some amount.  However, the cost of
doing this means that overseas encryption is going to overseas
companies, not US companies.  And this amounts to several billion
dollars per year.  I think we need to make sure that Congress knows it
is spending several billion dollars of someone else's money, in return
for the very small amount of security gained by keeping American
encryption products out of the worldwide market.

-russ <nelson@crynwr.com>    http://www.crynwr.com/crynwr/nelson.html
Crynwr Software   | Crynwr Software sells packet driver support | ask4 PGP key
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