From: Erle Greer <vagab0nd@sd.cybernex.net>
Date: Sun, 28 Jul 1996 05:18:48 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Public vs. Private Munitions
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960727192453.0069bd10@mail.sd.cybernex.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Here's how I understand it:
     The U.S. Government, concerned only with making America a safer place
for us taxpayers to live in, wants to regulate domestic encryption in order
to have access to the content of all transmissions.  Their theory is that
any cryptosystem that is stronger than their cryptanalysis systems can be
used in illegal transmissions and should be considered munitions.
     Theoretically, the government should only be have the resources to
control commercially-available, public encryption systems.  Who is to stop
anyone from designing their own cryptosystem for personal use?  If the
government intercepted a transmission from this private cryptosystem, and
could not decrypt it, would they assume that it must be considered
munitions?  Similarly, anyone could send uniformly-formatted random garble
that could also be considered munitions, or at least waste the governments
processing time.
     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?

vagab0nd@sd.cybernex.net
http://ww2.sd.cybernex.net/~vagab0nd/index.html
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