From: fnorky@geocities.com (Douglas L. Peterson)
Date: Sun, 21 Sep 1997 15:07:56 +0800
To: Ray Arachelian <cypherpunks@Algebra.COM
Subject: Re: Are we men or mice?  Re: House panel votes behind closed doors to build in Big Brother (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.96.970912184035.23828A-100000@beast.brainlink.com>
Message-ID: <34290f24.54892816@mail.geocities.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



On Fri, 12 Sep 1997 19:15:15 -0400 (EDT), you wrote:

>On Fri, 12 Sep 1997, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>
>> We have a goddamn right to use encryption without a government backdoor.
>
>Frankly among certain crowds many backdoors and other bugs have been
>detected in most OS's, how will the mother fuckers keep them from being
>found and used?  I mean, all you have to do is simply get their attention
>and have them snoop on you, meanwhile you watch all the packets and record
>the weird ones and you've got a copy of their session.  Yeah, they may use
>crypto on the back door, but even so, you now know their formats, and can
>also disassemble the code.  When you do, you've got the hole and can
>publish it. 
>
>Once you publish the hole and break the program.  Who will have confidence
>in that program after it's broken?
>
>After the evil laws, our jobs will be to break ALL GAK'ed software.  How
>will they prevent that?  Passing more laws to make the exposure of bugs
>and holes illegal?  Sort of like the cell scanner laws? :)
>

They (the government) has already tried to do this by trying to pass laws that
would make reverse engineering illegal.  I remember reading about a bill in
congress earlier this year that would have done just this.  I don't know the
status of it (I didn't get the bill number).

-Doug
-------------------
Douglas L. Peterson
mailto:fnorky@geocities.com
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/1271/