From: fc@all.net (Dr. Frederick B. Cohen)
Date: Sun, 3 Dec 95 13:49:24 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Globally legal Netscape
Message-ID: <9512032146.AA07279@all.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


If Netscape wants a global product that is completely legal anywhere,
all they have to do is eliminate all encryption.  The deal they are
cutting now is to claim that they provied privacy when they do not. 

The saddest part is that many people will believe they are secure:
-> the credit card companies and ecash banks will charge interest
   on every transaction to pay for the fraud rates,
-> the government will close its grip even tighter on individual
   freedom and get an even tighter stranglehold on free speech,
-> politicians and right wing demogogues will begin to expose
   individuals for having abortions and reading smut and thinking
   the "wrong" way.

I'm not asking you to believe this - only to look at history and see the
parallels throughout time.

	- The Russian revolution resulted in purges killing hundreds of
	thousands of innocent people because of their private, turned
	public, views as expoused in their private writings.

	- The Soviet government took away personal privacy to keep their
	stranglehold on their people.

	- The Chinese government used cameras and other similar
	privacy-removing techniques to track down the peaceful
	protesters who stood for free speech in Tien-a-men square. 

	- The Germans under Hitler used personal records to identify and
	murder millions of Jews and other peoples.

These are just four examples of selected from this century! There are
many more in each century.

Personal privacy - freedom from unreasonable search and seizure - the
right to bear arms - all of these tell me that the US constitution
secures the ability of Americans to have secure personal encryption in
the information age.

The president of the United States, each member of congress, and each
CIA and NSA and FBI agent swears to God that they will protect and
defend these rights as a condition of taking their offices.  Those that
fail to support the constitution in this way should be tried as traitors.

But instead, we see these people coercing Netscape into breaking the law
on their behalf. Breaking the law by cooperating with the government in
illegal search and seizure, breaking the law in preventing Americans from
attaining privacy, and breaking the law by defrauding the public with false
claims of privacy protection.

This is the time for Netscape to prove itself to the public by taking a
stand for the Constitution, for the law of the land, and for the people
of the United Stated and the world.

If Jeff the Netscape munitions expert sees this, I hope he forwards it
to his boss, and I hope his boss considers seriously that he may be the
instrument of a totalitarian state arising in the US and throughout the
world.

It's easy to say that you're not responsible and that it's the
government's fault, and that you're just following orders.  But there is
an old saying - evil flourishes when good people do nothing.

If money is what you worship, you can get it by standing on the dead
bones of your fellow human beings.  Hitler did it, it was done in the
Russian revolution, it was done in the Soviet Union, it was done in
China, and it will be done again and again, as long as the Netscapes of
the world fail to make a stand when it counts.

-> See: Info-Sec Heaven at URL http://all.net/
Management Analytics - 216-686-0090 - PO Box 1480, Hudson, OH 44236