re an open letter to mr clinton ld lance colostate edu l detweiler writes i m quite astonished shocked and appalled at this serious frontal assault on emerging american freedoms the clinton administration nor any other government agency has any legitimate role whatsoever in regulating cryptography to do so is tantamount to regulating acceptable speech and is blatantly unconstitutional perhaps we should rename this year in honor of such an illustrious proposal let the crappy chip live in infamy and the adminstration receive great shame and discredit for this bizarre misadventure imho encryption is also protected under the second amendment of the constitution of the united states i am outraged that my tax money is being used to develop technology to restrict my freedoms far beyond reasonable measures the u s government will have my full uncooperation and disobedience on any serious threat to my liberties such as this and i call on everyone with an interest in a sensible government to resist and defy this proposal the administration does not seem to understand that they are merely a subservient instrument to implement the will of the public and hence anyone involved in this proposal in this respect is wholly negligent and remiss in performing their lawful duty i am not surprised that this administration is doing this i could have told you so cryptography is neutral technology if everybody has strong cryptography including policemen bureacrats businessmen housewives thugs and hoodlums we have a sustainable equilibrium anything less is an unworkable anti egaltarian arrangement intrinsically antithetical to american freedoms and guaranteed to collapse under its own weight of inherent impracticality we don t need to compromise on issues of freedom privacy has always been something that has the effect of restricting out ability to prosecute criminals we are supposed to have the presumption of innocence i have the right to pull the curtains over my windows and close my door and the police may not come in if i perform a crim in my home they will have to find out by means other than simply looking encryption is to my data as the window curtains are to my home simple enough for too long our government has demonstrated itself to be increasingly hostile and a serious obstacle to economic vitality and protecting americans and yet the people vote for these people because they come out a lie to them about promising to fix things the administration has to be committed to leaving private industries alone esp on this issue the government has no legitimate role in regulating the content of communications law enforcement agencies must be prepared to forfeit their surveillance bludgeon they are soon and inevitably to be disarmed of it you mean they might have to go back to actually working to do their job oh heavens no such laws can be constitutionally sound and this is equivalent to a veiled threat which i don t appreciate this kind of extortion tends to agitate me and others into radicalism i will trade threats for threats and violation for violation perhaps the first amendment definitely the second and fifth if the administration did say this it would find itself impeached for reckless and outrageous disregard of essential established entrenched and explicit constitutional privacy guarantees the administration would have no legal standing whatsoever such an action would be egregiously illegal and criminal and wholly untolerated and disregarded by vast segments of the population unfortunately the vast segments of the population are misinformed they just haven t appended sr to the name of out country yet this is an outright dingaling denning lie the two aims of privacy and surveillance are intrinsically and fundamentally incompatible and you have to work for the nsa to think otherwise americans are about to discover ways through the use of technology to preserve their inalienable but forgotten freedoms that have slowly been eroded away by an increasingly distant and unresponsive and unrepresentative government i seriously doubt that the nsa thinks that privacy and surveillance are compatible i doubt of any smart person in any other agency thinks so either the problem is that they simply hold privacy to be of no value at all phil howard pdh netcom com ka wgn spell protection a right wing conservative capitalists are out to separate you from your money left wing liberal do gooders are out to separate you from everything else
