🚀 go-pugleaf

castor@drizzle.Stanford.EDU (Castor Fu) writes:

>With all the talk about "suspected" child molesters, etc. I thought I
>would bring up one point. How do people feel about restricting cryptographic
>privileges of people once they have been convicted of a particular
>set of crimes?

>It seems to me that  once a person has violated certain rules, e.g.
>child molestation, insider trading, etc.  one might restrict their
>access to tools which are particularly useful towards those ends,
>e.g. guns, crypto etc.

Hmmm, an interesting point.  But how do you restrict access to tools that
they can construct themselves?  Sure, it is illegal for a convicted felon
to own (or fabricate) a firearm, but the only reason they don't all do it
is because it takes expensive milling machines and considerable talent.
But how do you prevent someone from coding up an RSA program?  Prevent them
from purchasing a computer?  A compiler?  Restrict their access to books
which have the algorithm?  I think the pervasiveness of the information
and tools necessary to create encryption programs will make your suggestion
impossible to implement.

Remember, if they're already convicted criminals, they probably won't
pay too much attention to such laws anyway, so you'd have to find some
way to physically prevent them from getting what they want.  Literally
impossible.  The corner drug/gun dealer will now carry floppy disks
with PGP 2.0 on it for those that can't get it legally (and can't program
it themselves).

-- 
Michael T. Palmer, M/S 152, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA 23681
Voice: 804-864-2044,   FAX: 804-864-7793,   Email: m.t.palmer@larc.nasa.gov
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