🚀 go-pugleaf

 Although the discussion of key registration has been interesting,
 it does seem a bit like shooting fish in a barrel.  Discussing the
 proposition on a computer network invokes an inherent bias in most
 readers.  So, suppose we give the issue a different environment:

    The police bust an alleged child molester, and take possession
    of his PC.  They believe that the hard drive contains a full
    database of young kids who have been *or may be* assaulted.
    That database is enciphered.

 Now, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to defend
 cryptography to ordinary voters, congress people and newspaper
 reporters.  You also need to explain to a relative of one of those
 kids, someone who doesn't own or work with a computer, why the
 government should "allow" private cryptography which could hide
 this sort of information.

 You *could* say that cryptography does not molest children, that
 only molesters molest children.  Or you could say that if ciphers
 are outlawed, only outlaws will have ciphers, and that criminals
 would not register keys anyway.  But the district attorney might
 point out that, if the law required key registration (or even just
 the delivery of keys *after* a formal court hearing), the molester
 could at least be convicted on *that* charge, and would not be
 molesting anybody for a while.

 So what do *you* say?

 ---
 Terry Ritter   ritter@cactus.org