From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1996 17:00:42 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: One more reason to bash encrypt policy.
Message-ID: <199606240423.VAA13899@mail.pacifier.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Tonight, on the CBS show "60 minutes", we saw as the first portion the story 
of Carlos Salinas, the ex-president of Mexico, and his brother Raul, who 
managed to acquire $300 million despite the fact that his legitimate income 
never exceeded $190,000 in any year.  Well, Raul's in jail now, and his 
probably-crooked brother is in self-imposed exile (escape?) in Ireland.

Okay, you ask, is this relevant to Cypherpunks?  Sure!  The government's 
wanting to maintain an encryption policy to ensure that it is capable of 
reading encrypted traffic, right?  Well, the Bush and Clinton administration 
signed NAFTA with Mexico when it was run by a crook.  Where was the CIA?  
The NSA?  Raul's money went through Citibank.  Where's the FBI?  Isn't that 
one of the reasons we have such agencies?  Or is corruption among family 
members of the Presidend an old and established practice?  (Cattle futures?  
Sounds like a lotta bull to me!)
  
Why wasn't this stuff revealed by the US government?  Did it consider this 
corruption a failure?   Or a SUCCESS?  If we can't trust the US government 
to keep us from dealing with sleazy government's like Mexico, and exposing 
them, then why are we signing long-term trade agreements with them?  How 
much of Raul's money was due to NAFTA, for example?

Anyway, I think here's yet another reason to reject any kind of "National 
Crypto Policy" that's claimed to allow the government to snoop:  Clearly, 
they can't even be trusted to do the right thing with their information when 
they don't have to decrypt it.  I sure as hell am not going to expect 
them to do any better in the future.



Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com