gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) (08/28/86)
[Followups have been redirected to net.mail where general discussion of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act is in progress.] In article <3230@brl-smoke.ARPA>, William Bogstad writes: > In my opinion, a better law would be to protect > scrambled/encrypted conversations on the radio waves and leave > unprotected messages legally unprotected. This might encourage the > vendors to provide systems with real security and would put the law more > in step with the protection you can expect to actually have if someone > tries to break the law anyway. I believe that law should generally follow reality. Throwing a signal into the airwaves is equivalent to painting it on a wall. Anybody can come by and look at it (in reality) and some of them might be able to make some sense of it. If your business requires painting private information on public walls, you'd better be *sure* your encryption is good. A law that says "any old encryption will do" does NOT encourage vendors to provide systems with real security -- if somebody breaks it, and they find out, they can always tie the guy up with lawyers. On the other hand, having no legal protection for any radio signals (e.g. if you can decrypt it, it's yours) provides a STRONG incentive for vendors to provide real, live, secure, working encryption. If somebody breaks the encryption, their data becomes public and they have to invent a new scheme, which costs money. Better for them to do it right the first time. Reminds me of the old gun control motto: If decryption is outlawed, only outlaws will have your data. (If decryption was legal, NOBODY would have your data, assuming you do it right.) Protecting "encrypted" signals would make it illegal to receive a radio transmission that had been run through "rot13"... -- John Gilmore {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu jgilmore@lll-crg.arpa May the Source be with you!