🚀 go-pugleaf

tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) writes:


>Registering "Assault Keys" -- How the Proposal to Register Encryption
>Keys Has Ominous Parallels to Gun Control


For those of us outside the USofA these analogies make us wonder whether
such registration is not a good thing. If crypt really is like guns,
whose only use is to kill lots of innocent people it seems, then maybe
crypt were better strictly controlled. Ie, your arguement would be
stronger if you limited yourself to the uses and abuses of cryptography
and didn't engage in the silly American penchant for seeing yourselves oa
as lone cowboys out to right wrongs no matter how many people get killed
in the crossfire.

When people today cry out "Give me liberty or give me death" I'm tempted
to say, fine, go away and die, only please do it quietly, and don't haul
down a whole bunch of innocents with you.

[Note for those of you unable to see through sarcasm, I do not think
that cryptography and guns have any similarity at all. I see no problem
with the government trying to regulate our lives for the common good
(and yes that is hard to discerne at times and that is why we have open
political processes so the arguements can be advanced and experiments
tried and thrown out if they don't work) I doubt greatly that any
attempt to regulate cryptography in the manner suggested would work, and
as such the impassioned debate sounds about as pointless as it would be
against a govenment attempt to legislate pi to be 3.000]

In a parallel vein, secure telecommunications ( eg cellular phones) will
probably come about when the govenment realises that without such
security their own communications are open. This has happened twice here
in Canada- once here in BC and more recently in Quebec, where radio and
cellular calls between govt officials caused huge scandals (and see also
the Princess Di affair in the UK). Not every rampart is worth defending
to the death especially when the attacker is liable to destroy himself
in attacking a crumbling one anyway.