gnu@CGL.UCSF.EDU (John Gilmore) (04/27/88)
tada@athena.mit.edu (Michael Zehr) wrote: [discussion about NSA monitoring of phone calls, keywords on the nets, etc] > I've noticed this too, and I've oftened wondered exactly what those > people were trying to do. Presumably, they object to the US form of > government and want to see America infiltrated/weakened/whatever. I was one of the people who started this. Yes, I object to the US form of government, the form that makes the government think it has the right to spy on anybody (its own citizens, foreigners, it doesn't care). I want to see America strengthened, not weakened, though. I think an America where the government actively published cryptographic research would be stronger -- what if we had a U.S.D.A. of crypto, where you would send in a soil sample and they would tell you a good kind of crypto to use on it, with references to your local public library books. And you could believe them! [What an amazing idea, being able to believe what government representatives tell you! It's almost as radical as believing that the cop down the block is your friend. Was this ever true? It sure isn't today.] Suppose the NSA was constantly testing your communications security, but when they found that they could decode what you were sending, they would tell you, so you could fix it? This is the model we try to hold up to young system crackers, but we spend literally untold millions of dollars of tax money building an agency for cracking security -- which uses the information for its own benefit, with no benefit to the public or the owners of the information. I think an America where its citizens did not have to fear the intrusion of the government into their personal business would be stronger. I think that an open society, with a free interchange of ideas, is stronger than a society where what you are allowed to know is limited by what they think you need to know. I think that an open market is stronger than export controls, protect-you-from-yourself laws, and government price-fixing of RAM chips and drugs. I want to see America infiltrated by people like the Foundling Fathers, who thought hard about the dangers in centralized power [having experienced it first-hand], and who designed and built a society that intelligently weighs the benefits of central control against the risks. Does that answer your question?