koning@koning.dec.com (Paul Koning -- LAS Engineering) (09/12/86)
<<< to net.crypt, net.ham-radio >>> > While I agree that the proposed law is a change in the way the airwaves > have been treated in the U.S. (anyone can try to receive anything, only > transmissions are regulated), restrictions on reception are common in many > other countries. Despite the difficulty of enforcing restrictions on > receptions, many governments have chosen to pursue this route in an attempt to > protect themselves or major commercial interests. The fact that other countries tend to treat individual liberties as not very important and subject to abridgement by the state as desired, is no valid reason for the US to do likewise. One of the reasons I like it here (i.e. came here) is this difference -- which while not, unfortunately, an absolute, is definitely a difference of degree. > There is more to restriction on reception proposals than merely seeking to > protect commercial interests. If the responsibility for ensuring secure > communications were lodged solely with the system operator, it would be quite > reasonable for the operators to pursue the use of digital encryption. This is > likely to lead to the introduction of some very nice encoding/decoding boxes > to the general public. According the the government, the general public > includes terrorists, subversives, common criminals (as opposed to uncommon > criminals), and hackers (!). The law enforcement and intelligence agencies > would not like these unsavory characters to gain ready access to a means of > communication that could not easily be tapped. Some of the encryption schemes > can not even be broken by the National Security Agency. > In an effort to avoid handing any more advantages to criminals (e.g., > communications secure from monitoring by law enforcement people), the > government has evidently decided to restrict selected public freedoms. We > must decide which of the various conflicting rights take precedence in the > arena of communications. It is not an easy decision to make. > Patrick Wyant > AT&T Bell Laboratories > Naperville, IL > *!ihnp4!{mhuxo,ihwld}!gjphw This reasoning makes no sense AT ALL. Encryption is a well-known technology and is readily available to crooks of all kinds. The fact that in the past they have typically used bad schemes (see "the Codebreakers") doesn't mean they still do, and the presence or absence of this law will make not one bit of difference. This should be perfectly obvious, since the incentive for outlaws to encrypt has nothing to do with this bill, but everything with the fact that the police c.s. have and will continue to have wiretap powers, and that some agencies, such as NSA, either don't need wiretap authorization or just don't bother with legal niceties. Nor will the existence of this bill reduce, or some other bill increase, the availability of encryption to crooks. You can already get off-the-shelf crypto protection for your electronic mail and on-line data on your PC; as another writer pointed out, secure phone systems are also readily available. The ONLY place where this bill makes a difference is among law-abiding people. There, the fact that listening is claimed to be illegal will snow certain gullible people into thinking that their communications are protected, which is utter nonsense given the technology used. The proper solution is to protect communications with technology, not legal bull****, so that communications will have some real protection around them and not just a smokescreen that the slightest puff will blow away. The attempt of this bill to define the meaning of "readily accessible" is about as meaningful and sensible as the legendary attempt of some past legislature to define that PI shall equal 3. In fact, interpreted literally, it makes listening to TV audio illegal since that is transmitted on a subcarrier. This should give you some idea of the level of ignorance of those responsible for writing it. paul pa0pkg/w1 <<< standard disclaimer: these are personal opinions. >>>