cryptoanarchy.wiki

Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!

1996-09-04 - Re: What is the EFF doing exactly?

Header Data

From: Stanton McCandlish <mech@eff.org>
To: jamesd@echeque.com (James A. Donald)
Message Hash: 107eb1438da9dd42aa13a3991a932d3a12daba97e3976651bc16c1b3a5c7b79a
Message ID: <199609032202.PAA29704@eff.org>
Reply To: <199609031557.IAA28466@dns1.noc.best.net>
UTC Datetime: 1996-09-04 03:36:05 UTC
Raw Date: Wed, 4 Sep 1996 11:36:05 +0800

Raw message

From: Stanton McCandlish <mech@eff.org>
Date: Wed, 4 Sep 1996 11:36:05 +0800
To: jamesd@echeque.com (James A. Donald)
Subject: Re: What is the EFF doing exactly?
In-Reply-To: <199609031557.IAA28466@dns1.noc.best.net>
Message-ID: <199609032202.PAA29704@eff.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> But we do not want legislation, so we do not want to help write legislation.
> 
> We want to delay legislation for as long as possible, for the longer the
> delay, the more the balance of power favors the net and disavors the pols.
> 
> Therefore the correct strategy is simply to attack any politician who shows
> any interest in legislating on our issues.
> 
> We have no friends on Capitol hill, and if we did have friends, it would
> still be necessary to denounce them as enemies.

I agree with the general sentiment behind this, but I think it may go a 
bit overboard. For example, it is worthwhile to support Pro-CODE and SAFE 
(the two crypto bills now floating around in Congress). On the surface 
they both appear to threaten the viability of the Bernstein, Karn and 
Junger cases, but in reality neither of these bills have a chance in hell 
of passage.  "What's the point then?", you may ask. They slow down the 
Administration, which is pushing *very* hard and fast to get GAK adopted 
internationally, and to get US software companies to knuckle in to GAK in 
exchange for slightly relaxed export controls.  Make a lot of noise about 
the bills, and you screw up the administration's plans, since they have 
to divert at least some energy to fending the bills off or they *will* pass.
You do that, but keep the legal staff working solely on the cases, and 
you have more breathing room to get the cases through the Supreme Court 
before it's too late. And, in the event you lose the cases, you still 
have slightly less than a chance in hell of getting one of the bills 
passed and salvaging *something*, or simultaneously or alternately, just 
deploying more crypto tech such as S/WAN (which EFF is committed to as of 
the most recent board meething), since the Adminstration has been slowed 
down.  The more tech deployment you have, the more irrelevant the 
Administration's noises are.

The point being: Don't let disgust of a process or thing deter you from 
milking that process or thing of all it is worth, provided you sacrifice 
nothing significant in the process.

It has to be a judgement call. On some other issues this tactic does not 
work. Any legislation about porn on the Net needs to be slammed down, 
because any such legislation will get gutted by theocrats and turned into 
a censorship bill, as an example.

Choose action based on careful thinking, not kneejerk reaction, that's my 
motto, for what it may be worth.

--
<HTML><A HREF="http://www.eff.org/~mech/">    Stanton McCandlish
</A><HR><A HREF="mailto:mech@eff.org">        mech@eff.org
</A><P><A HREF="http://www.eff.org/">         Electronic Frontier Foundation
</A><P>        Online Activist    </HTML>

Thread