🚀 go-pugleaf

> Date: Fri, 17 Dec 93 05:57:30 -0600
> Newsgroups: austin.eff,comp.org.eff.talk,houston.efh.talk
> From: Spartan@cup.portal.com
> Subject: Re: clipper confusion
> 
> I'd like to comment on the following text included in a recent EFF position
> statement on Clipper:
> 
> |   *    There must be no broadening of governmental access to private
> |communications and records, through wiretap law or otherwise, unless there
> |is a public consensus that the risks to safety outweigh the risks to
> |liberty and that our safety will actually be increased by the broadened
> |access.
> 
> This is a reasonable goal, but the condition of "public consensus" is
> problematic.  What exactly is a public consensus, the public opinion,
> the majority will, the popular will, the general will, or any similar 
> demotic notion?

I suspect that in this context, "public consensus" means a general
agreement reached after public debate open to individuals and groups
concerned with the issue (such as those making up the DPSWG), as
opposed to the Administration or even the Congress ramming Clipper down
everyone's throats.  I doubt that a platonic ideal of consensus (i.e.,
the consent of each and every Joe Sixpack in the nation) was intended.

> |The Electronic Frontier Foundation recognizes that the combination of
> |digital communications and encryption technology does indeed threaten
> |some of law enforcement's current investigative techniques.
> |... But technology halts for no one, not even the law.
> 
> ... I caution
> that technological advance is inevitable in our society, but it does not
> have to procede as if we have no control.  We can slow the advance.  Not
> every solution to technological problems has to be a technical one.

I'm not so sure that I agree.  I think that we can and do guide the
direction of technological change, however inaccurately.  I think that
our ability to control the pace of technological change is much more
limited.  To use a crude metaphor, we are in a speeding vehicle with no
brakes and not much of a throttle, but we do have limited control of
the steering wheel.

In the current context, however, EFF's statements have a specific
meaning: the drug lords and "nuclear terrorists" which law enforcement
is so concerned with will use strong cryptographic techniques
regardless of public policy regarding encryption.  This weakening of
law enforcement's surveillance abilities is inevitable -- in fact, it
is already underway.  The question is whether the advantages of strong
cryptography will be available to the *rest* of us, the law-abiding
majority.

-- Prentiss Riddle ("aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada") riddle@rice.edu
-- Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of my employer.