From: Dan Geer <geer@world.std.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 00:55:59 +0800
To: iang@systemics.com
Subject: Re: Real issue of crypto controls: security or taxation loss?
In-Reply-To: <19970913205340.14699.qmail@aaa.aaa-mainstreet.nl>
Message-ID: <199709151620.AA10818@world.std.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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as you say,

    Sun Tsu (from memory): select the battleground where you are
    strongest and the enemy is weakest.

which is good advice.  

i recall Tzu also saying that you need to use
the enemy's momentum to your advantage, the 
principle of judo if you will.  in parallel,
revolutionaries of many stripes have found
that "heightening the contrast" is necessary
if you mean for real change to occur.  

which brings me to ask, rhetorically i suspect,
how we might heighten the contrast.  i'd suggest
delegating to some of us a support-the-bill
effort complete with a detailed description of
how the transmorgrified proposal that makes
illegal all sorts of now ordinary acts.

 * you can't talk on the phone in a language the surveillance
   folk don't know (witness Compuserve's prohibition of Welsh
   on their otherwise monitored bulletin boards)
 * cryptographic door locks are now illegal without escrow
   (witness the SecurID-equipped door knob)
 * contracts that are transmitted over electronic means including
   facsimile must not be encrypted unless the keys are made
   available (witness the proliferation of safe fax machines)
 * no end-to-end encrypting cellular telephones may be used even
   if you are talking to someone in an otherwise hostile country
   (witness the formal industrial espionage of some countries)
 * passwords that map directly to encryption keys must therefore
   be escrowed (witness nearly everything but start with all the
   Kerberos derivatives including new NT stuff)
 * banks have to ensure that encrypted materials put into their
   safety deposit boxes are escrowed (sue somebody for the keys
   in their box naming the bank co-defendant for failure to escrow)
 * the attorney client privilege will not apply to my whispering
   my key to him/her, i.e., if i tell my attorney my key they are
   now my escrow agent even if it means violating the sanctity
   of the private conversation (witness i-don't-know-what but
   call Kevorkian to enlist him)
 * outlaw anonymous trading and the firms that provide it on the
   grounds that these represent encryption-of-names (witness the
   rules requiring such trading under some circumstances and the
   convention for others)

in other words, shift the weight of who is radical
to them.  wrap ourselves in the flag deep within the
big-government-sucks camp.  march on the capital
dressed as skin heads demanding the end of privacy
for some sorrowful group or other.  send the kind
of letters that get you into trouble with the
Secret Service but send them encrypted in Bill's
private key (which you can issue him whether he likes
it or not).  mau-mau the flak catchers...

--dan