From: Richard Johnson <Richard.Johnson@Colorado.EDU>
Date: Fri, 22 Jul 94 13:01:47 PDT
To: jrochkin@cs.oberlin.edu (Jonathan Rochkind)
Subject: Re: clipper and export
In-Reply-To: <199407221831.OAA10336@cs.oberlin.edu>
Message-ID: <199407222001.OAA08066@spot.Colorado.EDU>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
| Is anyone else distrubed by the way that encryption export policy and the
| clipper chip seem to be linked {in administration policy, and in the
| press?
| ... If we need to prevent encryption export for national security
| reasons, as the administration alleges, then that doesn't neccesarily
| have any relation on whether we need to adopt key escrow too.

From the beginning, it has been clear to me that the whole thing about
crypto export prohibitions enhancing national security is just a smoke
screen.  While there may be a germ of truth to those kinds of statements,
the _real_ reason for propping export controls up when they are no longer
effective, and no longer make sense, is to fragment the worldwide market
and give weakened state-sponsored encryption a window of opportunity to
become a standard.

As such, I'm not upset at how the administration finally is publicly
acknowledging their abuse of export control law for anti-democratic ends.
I'm just upset at their abuse, and consider it highly unethical, even
criminal.

It's ironic that those who are engaging in these unethical, anti-
democratic acts are also asking us to trust them with access to our most
private conversations...


Rich

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