From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 20:15:05 +0800
To: Vincent Cate <vince@offshore.com.ai>
Subject: Re: [US POLITICS] Cypherpunk voting - ITAR or CDA
Message-ID: <199608260837.BAA29555@cygnus.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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At 01:37 AM 8/25/96 -0400, Vincent Cate <vince@offshore.com.ai> wrote:
>Dole says he would fix the ITAR problem, but try to keep something like
>CDA. 
>Clinton is keeping ITAR and signed CDA.  But not having the religious
>right he might soften on CDA.

Clinton is, of course, not a liberal.  Censorship doesn't bother him much.
(He's a friendly statist who likes to control your money more than
your life, so he might occasionally feel a twinge of guilt,
but not enough to change policies, and only if the polls are suggesting
that guilt would be a useful PR move.)

Dole, on the other hand, stands for being in his party longer than
anyone else, doing a competent job of insider coordination, and 
keeping Big Agribusiness happy.  His speechwriters are mildly
opposed to free trade, but like US exports.  Crypto software is not
a product of Archer Daniels Midland, Supermarket to the World,
but if the polls suggest that it's as popular as corn oil,
he'll have his speechwriters write a speech in favor of it.

Ross Perot's gonna get together a team of experts to decide on it,
though if we allow those Canadians to get American Encryption Technology
before we throw out NAFTA, there's gonna be a giant sucking sound
as all our cryptography business gets hoovered up to the Frozen North.

Ralph Nader knows that Clipper is unsafe at any speed, and would certainly
allow open public inquiry into the military-industrial complex's
encryption policy-making process, though any technological exports
would require an environmental impact statement, 2% of sales would be
required to be on solar-powered low-emission computing equipment,
and foreign cryptographic developers would have to be paid a living wage.

Dr. John Hagelin (no, not _that_ Hagelin) knows that mathematics
operates in harmony with Natural Law, and his party will introduce
scientifically proven techniques for reducing the entropy level of
messages, and eliminating the stress and paranoia that lead people to
hide the content of their messages.  Further more, special teams of
Sidhi(tm)-trained technicians will provide telepathic transmission for
areas with high levels of stress, which has been shown to reduce conflict
when only 1% of the telephone callers are accessed using these Scientifically
Proven Techniques.  Bring an offering of fruit and flowers to the polls.

The Socialist Worker's Party statement will be available as soon as
the Teamsters election results allow appointment of a bargaining unit
for the Bit Twiddlers, Left Shifters, and Table Look-up locals to
negotiate protocols with network management, and categorically
refuses the counter-revolutionary demands for EXclusive Or which the
multi-national corporations intend to impose on the work force.

.....

As you might have guessed, I'm still planning to vote Libertarian :-)
Free minds, free markets, free speech, and I guess Harry Browne
will do as good a job as any candidate we've had in a while.
Vice-presidential candidate Jo Jorgenson has run her own software
business for a while.

......

However, if you're tired of the Lesser of N evils, Cthulu's
export policy is that you can't escape anyway, and your puny mortal 
lives will be absorbed along with his morning coffee.
Your encryption technology is futile against the Elder Ghods,
and the arcane formulas in the Cyphernomicon of that mad physicist
Tim The Enchanter may summon spirits from the vasty deep, but
no secrets are safe from Nyarla-S-Ahothep who knows all and sees all.

#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> 	Reassign Authority!