From: Paul Bradley <paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 06:59:48 +0800
To: Antonomasia <ant@notatla.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Jim Bell reference
In-Reply-To: <199707120851.JAA01075@notatla.demon.co.uk>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.970713110646.728A-100000@fatmans.demon.co.uk>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




> Baloney.  The figures you give later indicate 1000 or 2000 investigations
> a year meeting computer encryption.  Even if they were all unbreakable
> that's 2000/year in a population of how many ?  Dents the clear-up rate
> by how much ?   Makes me think the issue is the preservation of many
> thousands of _unathorised_ taps.  What else could explain that viewpoint?

Don`t cloud the issue: The simple fact is strong encryption can and will 
obstruct law enforcement agencies in their "fight" against terrorism, 
child pornography, drugs etc... good.

> Incidentally, I'm against terrorism, child molestation etc etc. 
> I'm confident most other cypherpunks are too, so no nonsense please
> about free crypto supporters being backers of [crime of the month].

Once again, you fail to give adequate qualification to this statement, 
what forms of terrorism are you against: one mans terrorist is another 
mans freedom fighter. Were the French resistance during WWII terrorists? 
Would you then say their actions were wrong? As for child molestation, 
this is a clear cut case, most libertarians follow the basic rule that a 
crime has to be a direct act of agression, and infringe the rights of 
another person, therefore child molestation clearly comes into this 
category, distributing pictures of children being molested, raped, 
buggered, tortured and killed is clearly not a crime. Please clarify your 
position on this.

> >       A subject in a child pornography case used encryption in
> >       transmitting obscene and pornographic images of children
> >       over the Internet.
> >
> >       A major international drug trafficking subject recently used a
> >       telephone encryption device to frustrate court-approved
> >       electronic surveillance.

Above are two examples of why strong cryptography is a good thing, law 
enforcement should be routinely obstructed as often as possible.

        Datacomms Technologies data security
       Paul Bradley, Paul@fatmans.demon.co.uk
  Paul@crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul@cryptography.uk.eu.org    
       Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/
      Email for PGP public key, ID: FC76DA85
     "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"