From: Wei Dai <weidai@eskimo.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 14:01:38 +0800
To: Cypherpunks <cypherpunks@toad.com>
Subject: sooner or later
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.96.970918220732.16362D-100000@eskimo.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Many of us believe that a crypto ban is inevitable. The only question for
us is whether it'll happen sooner or later. Seen in this perspective, all
that industry and civil liberties lobbies can do is delay the ban. But is
this necessarily a good thing?

Here are some reasons to believe that an ealier ban might be preferable
to cypherpunks.

1. An earlier ban will do less damage to existing infrastructure.

2. A ban can not and will not stop crypto. It will force people to work
around it, but ultimately it will not achieve its goal. We might as well
start working around it sooner.

3. A ban will eventually be lifted, because of the impracticality of GAK,
abuses, wide-spread security problems caused by added complexity or
hackers stealing the master keys, ineffectiveness, sympathetic courts etc.
The sooner it comes into effect, the sooner it goes away.

4. A ban will focus public attention on crypto, especially if it creates
some of the problems mentioned above. This will accelerate deployment of
crypto after the ban is lifted.

In summary, the government is obligated to try and eventually fail to ban
crypto. We might as well let them get it over with.

I'm not suggesting that the professional lobbists stop their efforts (they
shouldn't, if only for appearances sake), but it might be time for the
rest of us to focus our attention on more important matters.