From: Alan Olsen <alano@teleport.com>
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 95 12:41:21 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: cryptography eliminates lawyers?
Message-ID: <199509091941.MAA04904@desiree.teleport.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 02:44 PM 9/8/95 -0400, you wrote:
>We wish!  We really wish!

"Fill that lawyer with a few more slugs of encryption!"

The argument that encryption will free us from all the legal ills of the
world is pretty specious.  If anything it will make more work for lawyers as
the non-clue-endowed portion of the world tries to come to terms with the
new technology.  They will make rules and subsets of rules and exeptions to
rules and variations to interpetations of rules that will make the current
set look like the rules to "chutes and ladders".  Part of the job of the
lawyer class is to guarentee the existance of work for other lawyers (as
well as themselves).  It does not depend on what the medium of exchange is.
Lawyers and government forces will try and figure out some way to try and
extract it from you.

The government is trying very hard to keep any scrap of power from creeping
away from them.  You can bet that they will try every thing they can think
of, rational and irrational, to regulate and control the wilds of
cyberspace.  They will pump up every imaginary boogieman to help them get
the public to swallow what they are fed.  By the time they figure out they
have been had, it will be too late.  Cypherpunks must be the syrup of ipecac
to the governments dose of poison to the body politic!  (I need to start
drinking more coffee in the morning.  I cannot believe I wrote that...)

Unfortunatly the public does not thrive on logic.  They had been trained to
react emotionally to things and not react logically.  I am not certain what
can be used to get them to realize why they need encryption.  Dispelling the
bogeymen is none need. The other thing is that the tools need to be made as
simple as possible.  The current tools for use require a fair bit of
technical understanding.  Until they have an integrated front-end that makes
it about as easy to use as America On-Line, encryption will not gain
widespread usage.  This is the type of code that needs to be written.
Making integrated tools like newsreaders and mail programs that support
strong encryption directly is what is needed for widespread use.  (As well
as being usable programs in and of themselves.  Many of the programs for
news and mail are crap.)  Making cryptography a "cool and fun thing to use"
will help dispell many of the myths and may help to defuse the government
created bogey men.  (Of course they will claim that it aids "criminals and
terrorists", but to them EVERYONE is a criminal and a terrorist.)  
|             Visualize whirled keys              | alano@teleport.com   |
|"It's only half a keyserver. I had to split the  | Disclaimer:          |
|other half with the government man." - Black Art | Ignore the man       |
|   -- PGP 2.6.2 key available on request --      |  behind the keyboard.|
|         http://www.teleport.com/~alano          |       <fnord>        |