🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <unruh.720338918@physics.ubc.ca>, unruh@physics.ubc.ca (William Unruh) writes:

  <discussion of similarity of cryptographic technology control and gun control>

|> [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]

Well, a lot of us have been convinced for some time that an attempt to
control what drugs people voluntarily consume is also pointless.  That
hasn't stopped our government (and yours also) from trying to do so.

|> 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.

Ah, we're way ahead of you here.  We've (drum roll, please) *passed a law*
making it illegal to sell radio receiver equipment capable of intercepting
cellular telephone calls, except to police and military.  Unfortunatly,
our governemnt lacks the authority to go after news organizations which
violate that law, or receive tips from others that do.  Perhaps if you
adopt our laws regarding communication equipment, and we adopt yours about
government control of the press, then both our governments will be happy.

You forget that our respective governments have the power to tax us to pay
for special police-and-military-only secure communication systems.  Think
how many jobs it will create when *all* branches of federal government and
not just the military can pay $1,200 for a telephone.  Why I bet they could
even fund it with a special tax on *our* telephone rates.

Please excuse all the sarcasm here, but I have no faith that the obvious
pointlessness of some program is any effective deterrent to a government's
tendency to pursue it.  As Prohibition and the War on Drugs have shown,
a serious government attempt to do something impossible can cause a lot
of what the military types call "collateral damage". 
-- 
  Alan S. Watt
  Yale University			Computing and Information Systems
  Box 2112 Yale Station			(203) 432-6602
  New Haven, CT  06520-2112		Watt-Alan@Yale.Edu