🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct28.214920.15601@tessi.com>, george@tessi (George Mitchell) writes:
>Now it's my turn to go out on a limb.  I believe that all the parti-
>cipants in this discussion would agree that: When the Government
>can show, through legitimately obtained evidence, that a particular
>encrypted communication relates to a crime, then they can, after
>the fact, subpoena the plaintext of that communication.  What
>most of us object to is having to yield the keys before the fact.

Let me then prove your belief wrong by saying that I disagree.  In the
country I live in, the government can't legally subpoena the contents
of phone conversations either, ie. wiretapping is illegal here.  And
until the beginning of this month, subpoeaning even the originators,
recipient and time stamps of phone and other communications was not
allowed.  I'm not happy about the change, even if it requires a court
order and must be told to the person after the fact.

But it does seem that in USA the tradition is different and many
people even on groups like comp.org.eff.talk and sci.crypt are willing
to accept wiretaps, so your hypotesis might be a workable working
hypotesis.  Well, to be fair, even many people in Finland would accept
wiretaps and the police is trying to get them every few years - looks
like they have a better possibility to succeed now than before.

Let me also repeat that the distinction of before/after the fact is
the distinction of having the Big Brother video camera in your bedroom
versus having it behind your bedroom window.  It is an important
difference, so even though I would prefer not to have the camera at
all it's better to have it outside than inside - then I can at least
draw the curtains over the window.

//Jyrki