re screw the people crypto is for hard core hackers spooks only in article r l inn gq senator bedfellow mit edu jfc athena mit edu john f carr writes in most cases information you come by properly is yours to use as you wish but there are certainly exceptions if you write a paper which includes sufficiently detailed information on how to build a nuclear weapon it is classified as i understand the law nuclear weapons design is automatically classified even if you do the work yourself i believe you are then not allowed to read your own paper hate to mess up your point but it is incredibly easy to learn how to make a nuclear weapon the hard part is getting the radioactives to put in it have you ever read tom clancy s the sum of all fears it describes in great detail how a palestinian terrorist group constructed a nuclear bomb using stolen actually found plutonium with some help from an east german nuclear physicist for some non fiction read tom clancy s article five minutes till midnight it shows how a terrorist group could construct a nuke using neptunium a low grade radioactive waste product dumped in toxic waste sites and forgotten about he also claims information on constructing a nuke is easily found in any large library sounds kind of scary doesn t it a less serious example if you tell drivers about a speed trap they are about to run into you can be fined even though you might argue that you broke no law when you discovered the location of the policeman the charge is interfering with a police officer which is quite similar what you would be doing by reverse engineering the clipper chip don t tell me that you think this violates the constitution find some court cases which have struck down such laws many people would not be comforted by the fact that the government violated their rights when it imprisoned them don t know whether you could get busted for warning of a speedtrap doug holland doug holland anyone who tries to take away my freedom holland cs colostate edu of speech will have to pry it from my pgp key available by e mail cold dead lips
