🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec17.232704.13763@netcom.com> strnlght@netcom.com (David Sternlight) writes:
>I'm afraid this is an oversimplification. There are many whom
>the government has reason to collect intelligence on who cannot
>use secure cryptography with no fear of prosecution.
	Proof by assertion?  Do you have some examples?

>I sympathize with the desire for honest citizens to have secure
>cryptography. I count myself in that number. 
	Sorry, but you posts belie that IMHO.


>To believe this does not, however, mean that one should deny governments'
>legitimate interest in this matter, 
	How is the government's interest legitimate?  Does a government
	have an intrinsic right to spy on individuals? If so why?
	How was this "right" arrived at?

>and their taking of cryptographic violations of munitions laws much more 
>seriously than the building of airplane models.
	Considering cryptography a form of munitions would be laughable
	if fewer people were duped by it.  Munitions are intrinsically 
	life threatening.  Crypto is merely a mathematical transformation
	of data. No one can be killed by this.  The same argument that would 
	be used to claim that crypto is a munition could be used to claim that 
	mathematical knowledge is a munition. After all, newtonian mechanics
	can be used to calculate artillery trajectories.  Why isn't that
	a munition?  I'll tell you why: because the NSA and its cohorts have
	been successful in duping people into believing that crypto is a
	munition.  If people would only think critically about the 
	blantantly stupid and self serving things their governments try
	to dupe them into believing we would all be a lot better off.



						smg