🚀 go-pugleaf

denning@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu writes:
>The posting about the proposal I made at the NCSC for key registration
>is essentially correct.  Let me add to it the following:
>1.  The government is not taking any action to curb crypto and is 
>unlikely to take any such action in the near future.  

>4.  Someone suggested that law enforcement routinely taps without
>court order.  This is an ungrounded claim for which I have never
>seen any evidence. 
      There is evidence.  See the 1976 congressional hearings on 
wiretapping and electronic surveillance (available in the Government
documents collection of depository libraries).  They identified 
a large number of specific instances where evidence of unauthorized
wiretapping by law enforcement had surfaced, usually as a result of
some scandal.  This is the classic basic source on the subject.
Other sources include various books by ex-FBI agents, including
"Will", by Gordon Liddy, and "Hoover's FBI" (author?).  FBI
practice in that area has been well-documented.

>6.  Some people have said we should not give up our privacy to the
>government.  But the constitution does not give us absolute privacy.
>We are protected from unreasonable searches and seizures, but not
>reasonable ones in response to "probable cause" of crime.  
       The constitutional basis for wiretapping has always been shakey.
Again, I refer to the 1976 congressional hearings for an overview of this
subject.  At least one state (Alabama?) doesn't allow it by state law
enforcement, or so claims a recent issue of FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin.
There's a fundamental distinction between openly searching under a court order
and observing in secret.  The latter is fundamentally at odds with the
notion of a government under law.  It's tolerated by Congress,
as the legislative history of wiretap law makes clear, but Congress
has never really been happy with wiretaps, and has made approval
for legal wiretaps hard to get.

					John Nagle