From: Vin McLellan <vin@shore.net>
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 1997 12:07:31 +0800
To: cypherpunks@Algebra.COM
Subject: A Reality Check & the Full Citizenship Campaign
In-Reply-To: <1.5.4.32.19970913235944.00814c1c@pop.pipeline.com>
Message-ID: <v03007800b04118f6f67d@[198.115.179.81]>
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	John Young, who informs so many, mulled the worst case scenario:

>That gives about 450 days to widespread stego, surrept
>onions and backchannels to prepositioned stashes. Max
>use prior to.

	Hmmm.  Isn't it time for a reality check?  Getting bent out of
shape because the House Intelligence Community -- surely the legislators
closest to the spooks and spies of the Permanent Government, and rather
addicted to its product -- votes to outlaw cryptography without a backdoor
seems to be excessive.

	Declan or someone who tracks Congressional voting trends should
double-check me, but I harbor doubt that the US Congress (or rather, the
House of Represenatives) is about to vote and approve such a bill.

	I understand the Senate is perhaps gone, but the House?

	If I'm right, then we have been given the focus for a major
political action campaign.  I'm up for a bullet vote, where possible.  We
must build a coalition which will demand a yea or nay promise on access to
strong crypto from prospective candidates for the Senate and House in '98.
And from presidential candidates for 2,000.

	Personally, I think we should define the correct choice in terms of
Full Citizenship -- the option to whisper or encrypt that should be
available to every law-abiding citizen.

	And we should define the Spook & Spy alternative as the stunted
choice: a citizenship stripped of basic rights by an ambitous, jealous, and
greedy class of professional spies and their acolytes.

	This Nation, and the rights of citizenship the state conceeds, were
not defined and enumberated in terms of what will make police oversight and
investigation most cost-effective.

	Suerte,
		_Vin

"Cryptography is like literacy in the Dark Ages. Infinitely potent, for
good and ill... yet basically an intellectual construct, an idea, which by
its nature will resist efforts to restrict it to bureaucrats and others who
deem only themselves worthy of such Privilege."
_ A thinking man's Creed for Crypto/ vbm.

 *     Vin McLellan + The Privacy Guild + <vin@shore.net>    *
  53 Nichols St., Chelsea, MA 02150 USA <617> 884-5548