🚀 go-pugleaf

I'll be offline for the next several days but wanted to make a few 
observations.  My mail has been staggering and I apologize to those
of you that I did not answer or sent just a cryptic reply.

The arguments against registration seem to fall into two classes:
1) it's futile and 2) we shouldn't trust the government.  Bill Stewart 
gets my award for the best argument for (1): just register 2**23 keys-
it actually cracked me up when I read it!

I stuck my foot in my mouth again when I said something suggesting 
that our obligation was only to follow the laws.  I guess I meant 
"legal obligation," but then it's a tautology, so I was clearly not
thinking.  I at least like to believe that I would have defied Hitler 
and other such atrocities.  

As a society we do many things to help law enforcement because humans are 
not so great  about doing certain things unless at least mildly coerced.  
How many people would pay their full taxes if employers weren't obliged to 
report their incomes?  (Some of you probably think this is a bad idea
too, but let's not go off onto that tangent.)

Perry Metzger said that under the Digital Telephony legislation, the
government wants to get access to lines without the help of the 
carriers.  This is false.  The legislation reads: "The legislation
does not establish any independent 'dial-up' authority by which 
criminal law enforcement agencies could effectuate interceptions 
without the affirmative assistance of the providers or operators.  The 
providers and operators will continue to make the necessary 
interconnections or issue the necessary switch program instructions to 
effectuate an interception."  The government wants it to be setup so 
that the providers have to activate the taps so that the gov't can't be 
accused of doing unauthorized taps.

Perry also expressed a concern about my speaking before doing all my 
homework.  This reminds me of something Donn Parker said to me 
after I did my study of "hackers", presented a paper on the topic at 
the NCSC, and then helped defend Craig Neidorf.  Donn said I should 
talk to law enforcers and that if I did, I would see it differently.  
I took Donn's advice seriously and visited several people at different 
agencies, including the celebrated Gail Thackery, over the next year.  The 
highlight was LAPD.  If you want to see the world from a different view,
go to LAPD.  Well, this adventure altered how I saw law enforcement,
and I ended up with considerably greater respect for them and 
for the dangers they confront doing their work.  Over the years I have also
worked closely with people in the FBI and other gov't agencies.  I have
considerable respect for the people I've worked with.  Obviously, these are
not the same people that some of you have encountered either directly
or indirectly.  For those of you who think I should now read about government
abuses, I have read Bamford (much of which I distrust), "Spying on
America", and "The FBI in Transition" (highly speculative) and will 
continue reading.

Our rights to electronic privacy have yet to be thoroughly sorted out
like they have for other things.  You can't, for example, rope off 
part of your property and say "sorry government, no trespassing".  We
have the capability to do that with electronic communication and in
this country we're proceeding to do just that without much thought.

Dorothy Denning
denning@cs.georgetown.edu (posting from guvax)