From: Marshall Clow <mclow@owl.csusm.edu>
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 12:02:55 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Deloitte-Touche?
Message-ID: <199702052002.MAA03703@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Several people wrote:
>I wrote:
>>ObCrypto policy:
>>        Was anyone else besides me amazed by the guy
>>from Deloitte-Touche at the Internet Privacy Coalition luncheon
>>last week? I mean, he all but advocated violent overthrow of
>>the government. [...]
>
>For the benefit of those of us who were not at this luncheon (probably
>not even in the same country), could you please say more about this,
>Marshall?  What was the subject?  What _did_ the DT speaker say, exactly?
>
After a while, I stopped taking notes, because I was so astounded at
what he was saying.
(Maybe someone with more complete notes could post a better summary)

But, here a brief overview of the luncheon:

Last Wednesday, January 29th, the Internet Privacy Coalition had
a "policy lunch" in San Francisco. It was in one of the hotels hosting
the RSA conference, and at the same time that the conference was
breaking for lunch, so it was easy for attendees to "switch lunches".

The speakers (as I remember, apologies to any I miss) were:
	Whit Diffie
	John Gilmore
	Kenneth Bass (counsel in Karn vs. Dept of State)
	Herb Lin (who ran the NRC staff for the crypto study)
	Marc Rotenberg
	William Hugh Murray (Deloitte & Touche)
	and a couple others that I missed, as I left early.

Mr. Murray gave a long, impassioned speech.

He said that the government is going to crack down on
domestic possession and use of crypto, that they
were looking to increase their wiretapping capabilities
100-fold, and so on.

He was very emphatic about not trusting anything
that the government says, and that once they got
their "foot in the door", that they would seek to
expand their abilities to regulate, etc, etc.

He advocated deployment of strong crypto. He
insisted that there was no way the government
could stop the export of strong crypto. He exhorted
people to refuse to obey the ITAR/EAR regulations,
and to lobby their congresscritters to get the
PRO-CODE bill passed.


It wasn't really what he said that amazed me, because
I had heard most of it (in bits and pieces) before. It
was presenting it all in a package, in an emotional
manner, by an elderly, conseratively dressed
accountant who was representing a large
corporation whose job it is to help people obey the
government.

[ My father was an accountant. He worked for
Deloitte-Touche, in fact. I don't expect accountants
to be passionate about government regs, and
especially not to advocate disobediance. Maybe
that's why this affected me so strongly. ]

-- Marshall

Marshall Clow     Aladdin Systems   <mailto:mclow@mailhost2.csusm.edu>

Warning: Objects in calendar are closer than they appear.