From: Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 08:58:13 -0700 (PDT)
To: "Timothy C. May" <cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: "Right to Privacy" and Crypto
Message-ID: <3.0b19.32.19961015115525.0067560c@panix.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>I'm of course just a layman, not a law professor or scholar. But I feel it
>best that we not invoke a "right to privacy" to protect our crypto
>abilities, when such a "right" apparently does not exist.
>
>However, certain things which _look_ like a "right to privacy" do exist:

I agree with your analysis.  It certainly matches what I was taught in law
school.  The rhetorical point I was making however is that a *practical*
not constitutional right to privacy exists as long as your questioner
eschews torture.  I think it is useful to point out -- in response to
government types who assert that "there's no absolute right to privacy" --
that they have actually set aside a zone of privacy by their rejection of
torture as an interrogation technique.

What this does is to remind listeners that coerced speech has an unsavory
history and it turns the argument from one between absolute positions into
one in which we are just arguing which sanctions should be applied when.

DCF

"Note that many governments have officially given up rape and torture as
sanctions.  (These were once universal.)  All we have to do is get them to
give up murder, imprisonment, and robbery as sanctions and we'll have
civilized them completely."