🚀 go-pugleaf

>Do we really
>want a society where electronic communications cannot ever be broken
>when there is good reason to believe some major threat against society
>is being planned?

	You bet.

	If a "major threat" against society is being planned, then it
had better be major ENOUGH to justify some other means of finding out
what is being planned. Let's be realistic, here - if I had an H-bomb
buried under Washington, DC, and you were REALLY sure it was me, do
you think that someone would take the time to cryptanalyze my personal
files on my workstation? No - that's when rubber hose cryptanalysis
comes in.

	"major threats" justify major measures. But *hypothetical*
major threats do not justify institutionalizing the surveillance of an
entire population. Our intelligence gathering agencies do a good enough
job with the tools they have (without even assuming illegal wiretaps)
that I trust them to identify the major threats - and at that point
there's reason to argue in court for taking extraordinary measures.

mjr.
-- 
	You can't fix stupidity with software.
						-notebooks of a heretic