From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Date: Sat, 20 Aug 94 12:34:49 PDT
To: hart@chaos.bsu.edu (Jim Hart)
Subject: Re: Making new crimes out of thin air
In-Reply-To: <199408201904.OAA07654@chaos.bsu.edu>
Message-ID: <199408201934.MAA21842@netcom6.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


I agree 100% with Jim Hart's points.

Let me add that I think this topic is very relevant to Cypherpunks, as
it gets to the heart of the matter on what should be legal, illegal,
etc.

I didn't respond yesterday to Steve Bellovin's remarks because my
Netcom mail was delayed for many hours at at time (Netcom has 30,000
user accounts now and is facing growing pains out the wazoo).

Last night I posted my "For Subscribers Only" newsletter, to make my
point by example. Anyone who "illegally decrypted" it (and of course a
couple of folks did immediately--a trivial rot-13 "encryption") was,
putatively, "stealing" from me. Hardly.

(To be fair to Steve B., one of his later postings said something
about a "difficulty test," along the lines of the NSA's 40-bit
keylength allowance. I dislike laws that depend on someone's idea of
computational complexity...that would be a new can of worms.)

Such laws about "illegal to decrypt" are also essentially
unenforceable, besides being on shaky ideological/ethical ground. Any
such laws would likely be extended to require certain kinds of
encryption, to place limits on crypto, etc. (I see signs in the text
of the Digital Telephony Bill of application to crypto.)

If a number comes my way, I don't want no steenking data cops telling
me I can't look it, manipulate it, etc.


--Tim May

-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."