🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct26.203050.14752@netcom.com>
   strnlght@netcom.com (David Sternlight) writes:
>
> [summary of May's earlier posting and comments thereto deleted]
>
>The law enforcement and intelligence agencies have gained much
>invaluable national security and anti-crime information through
>cryptanalysis. But this activity is based on their skill, not on
>circumscribing the rights of the rest of us, particularly the right
>to feel secure in our persons and property.
>
> [...]
>
>Now the intelligence and anti-crime services, like the proverbial
>camel with his nose under the tent, want to redefine what they've
>accomplished by skill as a "right" of theirs, and obtain legislation
>to force others to give it to them in the face of new technology, by
>compulsory and ubiquitous wiretap installations (which we are assured
>will only be activated with a court order--remind anyone of any other
>place and time?) and now we see this proposal for compulsory access to
>encrypted traffic (of course only with a court order). Try to "take
>back" your key and your previous traffic if a future bureaucracy eases
>the protections.  It's happened before, and secretly.
>

In discussing this with an an attorney acquaintance with experience
on the FBI side, his immediate and cynical response to the idea of
court-ordered protection of privacy was generally as follows:

  1)  Law enforcement people routinely violate the court-order
      restriction and wiretap;
  2)  Via the wiretap, they learn of some other evidence they can
      collect of an illegal activity;
  3)  Using the fruits of step 2, they appear before a court and
      obtain the court order, omitting the fact that the fruits of
      step 2 were obtained by the illegal act of step 1, and
  4)  Voila! a court-ordered wiretap!

For the readership of this group, it is superfluous to point out
that this abhorrent practice has nothing to do with being pro-crime
or anti-crime.  It does have to do with the idea that the government
shouldn't break laws it expects the citizenry to obey - any laws
whatsoever.  The rule of law, and no person being above it, is one
of the most basic tenets of American society.

So why give (probably) well-meaning law enforcement people the means
to commit such a criminal sequence of acts?
-- 
Brett Stewart
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.           +1 512 462 5101 FAX
5900 E. Ben White Blvd MS526           +1 512 462 4336 Telephone
Austin, Texas 78741      USA           Brett.Stewart@AMD.com