🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov3.083903.15724@qualcomm.com> karn@servo.qualcomm.com (Phil Karn) writes:
>In article <1992Nov2.084229.1@zodiac.rutgers.edu> leichter@zodiac.rutgers.edu writes:

>>Or imagine that Ollie North's famous deleted mail messages had been
>>encrypted.  Or, to take a recent example, that Caspar Weinberger had
>>used a palmtop to keep his personal diary, and all entries in it
>>were encrypted.
>
>This comes with the territory. Either everyone has the right to encrypt,
>including slimy politicians, or no one will.

Of course, everyone has the capability and right to encrypt -- at home and
for personal use or for personal communication.  However, we have some
control over those politicians, since they work for us.  We can require
them to register all keys (archive all messages) for traffic done during
their government work.  We can even require that their systems be built in
such a way as to automatically archive all traffic -- not just rely on
backup tapes of encrypted messages which were used against Ollie in his
hearing before Congress.

>What about all of the face-to-face conversations Ollie had that were
>never recorded anywhere? Isn't that a loophole? Perhaps we should
>require everyone to carry personal bugs 24 hours/day.

Perhaps we should require all government officials to do so, but the real
criminals like Ollie North would find a way around that, too.  The answer
I'm afraid is that we'll always have criminals in government and we just
have to make sure that they will be found out eventually and will never
have the power to really hurt us.

-- 
-- <<Disclaimer: All opinions expressed are my own, of course.>>
-- Carl Ellison						cme@sw.stratus.com
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