an open letter to mr clinton 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 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 while encryption technology can help americans protect business secrets and the unauthorized release of personal information it also can be used by terrorists drug dealers and other criminals it seems to me that u s diplomatic communications should be tappable by the u n whenever any countries produce a warrant to the u n in fact i think we should stop paying the nsa billions of dollars a year to produce unbreakable codes for this reason these actions violate the sovereignity of international law i hope mr clinton is shrewd enough to recognize my sarcasm and satire here but if he isn t it s a modest and reasonable proposal so he should find merit with it nevertheless 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 for too long there has been little or no dialogue between our private sector and the law enforcement community to resolve the tension between economic vitality and the real challenges of protecting americans for too long our government has demonstrated itself to be increasingly hostile and a serious obstacle to economic vitality and protecting americans since encryption technology will play an increasingly important role in that infrastructure the federal government must act quickly to develop consistent comprehensive policies regarding its use the administration is committed to policies that protect all americans right to privacy while also protecting them from those who break the law it is not possible for the federal government to act quickly or develop consistent comprehensive policies period and even if by some grandiose miracle such a thing were possible it would only be an efficient way to deprive american citizens of fundamental and inalienable rights 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 q if the administration were unable to find a technological solution like the one proposed would the administration be willing to use legal remedies to restrict access to more powerful encryption devices 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 the administration is not saying since encryption threatens the public safety and effective law enforcement we will prohibit it outright as some countries have effectively done 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 nor is the u s saying that every american as a matter of right is entitled to an unbreakable commercial encryption product the u s comprised of a vast majority of people fanatically committed to preserving their privacy in the face of an increasingly totalitarian government is saying just that take your chips and give them to nsa employees as christmas bonuses we can run any algorithm on our computers we damn well please and we will make any chips we please and we will send any bit pattern over our data highways we please and if you try to stop us you will be gradually or abruptly dissolved into nothingness privacy vs law enforcement there is a false tension created in the assessment that this issue is an either or proposition 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 ld longs lance colostate edu
