From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Jul 1996 09:52:58 +0800
To: David Sternlight <cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Gorelick testifies before Senate, unveils new executive order
Message-ID: <199607182057.NAA18681@mail.pacifier.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 03:04 AM 7/18/96 -0700, David Sternlight wrote:

>Serious studies have shown that the kinds of protections to make the
>systems we depend on robust against determined and malicious attackers (say
>a terrorist government, or one bent on doing a lot of damage in retaliation
>for one of our policies they don't like)

"Policies"?  There you go again.   A "policy," at least in regard to the US 
government, is not merely opinion, but is action.  Action which may 
(legitimately) anger people.  Action which may not genuinely be in the 
interests of American people, although you'd never get those government 
thugs to admit it.  If somebody overseas doesn't like a US government 
"policy," maybe the best thing to do is to determine whether it's actually 
beneficial to the ordinary American citizen, or whether its benefits can be 
achieved simply by changing government behavior.

So what's the best way to avoid "terrorism"?  Maybe the fastest, more 
efficent, and overall best way to avoid it is to get the US government to 
stop doing things that foment it, rather than trying to protect against it 
after the fact.


, have costs beyond the capability
>of individual private sector actors. Your friendly neighborhood ISP, for
>instance, probably can't affort the iron belt and steel suspenders needed
>to make his system and its connectivity sabotage-proof, and so on. Even
>cheap but clever solutions involving encryption in such systems require
>standards and common practices across many institutions.

None of which require government actions to achieve.  If anything, what is 
required is that governments STOP doing things which discourage such 
implementations of encryption.  Government is the problem, not the solution.


>In such a case, where public benefits from government action greatly exceed
>public (taxpayer) costs,

This is the classic Sternlight misrepresentation.  Chances are excellent 
that this public benefit you speak of is almost totally a benefit to 
government employees, not ordinary citizens.  Government's "solutions" are 
predictably skewed to maintain government budgets, not actually designed to 
solve the underlying problem.  



Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com