From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Sun, 28 Jul 1996 19:48:04 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Public vs. Private Munitions
Message-ID: <199607280635.XAA10977@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 02:24 PM 7/27/96 -0500, Erle Greer <vagab0nd@sd.cybernex.net> wrote:
>     Theoretically, the government should only be have 
> the resources to control commercially-available, public
> encryption systems.  [...]
>     Why are we so worried about government regulation?  
> Can't we just devise our own cryptosystems and just don't 
> sell them or make them publicly available?

Theoretically, the First Amendment says you can say or write
anything you want.  In practice, the Supremes have said it means
far less than that; during some of their worst years they
approved convicting people for speaking against the draft
because it interfered with the US ability to conduct a war
it hadn't yet gotten into, and they've generally held that
commercial speech doesn't rate the same protection as
political speech.  Feh!

Theoretically, on the other hand, the US Government has the 
power to regulate interstate commerce.  (A bad idea, in my opinion,
though taking that power away from the states was clearly good.)
In practice, the Supremes have let the Congress get away with
all sorts of abuses, like banning a farmer from growing grain
on his own land and feeding it to his own hogs, and banning
citizens from growing or manufacturing their own drugs because
it's difficult to tell whether a given bunch of drugs was
really grown in the state it's in or bought from out of state.

Various government officials have taken the position that
giving a university class on encryption is restricted by ITAR;
Dan Bernstein's lawsuit against them is off to a very good start.
This isn't even distributing products - this is discussing math.
It's potentially illegal for me to even write the evil equations
in this mail message, since it's going to foreigners.
#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> 
#			Dispel Authority!