🚀 go-pugleaf

If I could take back the words that have come back to haunt me I 
would, but alas this is not possible.  My comment about taxes was
not directed at Mr. Eichler, but perhaps at the ex-cop he wrote
about or the person who wrote me privately suggesting that taxes
themselves were a crime far worse than Organized Crime.  While I 
have considerable faith in the goodness of humanity, I also recognize 
our frailty.  This goodness/frailty is not limited to people either 
inside or outside the government.  How best to deal with human
frailty is no doubt one of the great questions that will not be
solved by me or by cryptography.

While I recognize that the government has a long list of abuses,
Mr. Eichler's example being one of many, I am unconvinced that the
best way to deal with these abuses or by those performed by people
outside the government is by making it harder for law enforcers.
As someone has said, "A society that cannot enforce its laws invites
disrespect for those laws."  But regulating crypto may not be a good
solution either unless we can come up with an acceptable means.

Someone asked whether John Gotti would have used encryption.  I don't
know, but he didn't.  Rumor is that these guys started their 
conversations with some sort of ritual: "Gee, do you suppose they're
listening? ..."  

The $45K per wiretap average came from the "Wiretap Report" for 1991.
It lists all wiretaps for the year -- well, at least the court-ordered
ones :-) 

Dorothy Denning
denning@cs.georgetown.edu