From: mike@vort.cuc.ab.ca (Mike Nemeth)
Subject: RE: Limits on the Use of Cryptography
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 07:40:58 GMT

in Article 3944 of sci.crypt, ritter@cactus.org (Terry Ritter) writes...

> Although the discussion of key registration has been interesting,
> it does seem a bit like shooting fish in a barrel.  Discussing the
> proposition on a computer network invokes an inherent bias in most
> readers.  So, suppose we give the issue a different environment:
>
>    The police bust an alleged child molester, and take possession
>    of his PC.  They believe that the hard drive contains a full
>    database of young kids who have been *or may be* assaulted.
>    That database is enciphered.

I have noticed this fascination, nay obsession, that the just-say-no-to-
crypto side has with child pornography. The FBI and suppporters of various
crypto-restricting bills use every opportunity to tell the public that
this menace is growing beyond all leaps and bounds, and without the most
Draconian measures it will surely overwhelm us all. 60 years ago it
was "alcohol", and now you have the FBI, 30 years ago it was "communism",
and you had McCarthy witch trials, a decade ago it was "drugs" and now
you have "no-knock" warrants.

> Now, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to defend
> cryptography to ordinary voters, congress people and newspaper
> reporters.  You also need to explain to a relative of one of those
> kids, someone who doesn't own or work with a computer, why the
> government should "allow" private cryptography which could hide
> this sort of information.
>
> You *could* say that cryptography does not molest children, that
> only molesters molest children.  Or you could say that if ciphers
> are outlawed, only outlaws will have ciphers, and that criminals
> would not register keys anyway.  But the district attorney might
> point out that, if the law required key registration (or even just
> the delivery of keys *after* a formal court hearing), the molester
> could at least be convicted on *that* charge, and would not be
> molesting anybody for a while.
>
> So what do *you* say?

I say that your argument is specious, and attempts to paint ordinary
citizens who wish to keep their communications private as potential
child molesters. I also say that the district attorney that would put
forth such an argument in front of a jury would be cautioned, if not
outright censured, by the presiding trail judge as being a deliberate
attempt to sway the jury using a highly charged emotional issue,
child pornography, that has little or no bearing on the central theme
of the issue on trial, which is:

Does a private citizen, using readily available technology, have the
right to maintain his/her privacy against arbitrary government intrusion?

Your use of childporn is a canard.

Suppose that in a few years, a bill or a series of bills have passed
into law that restrict crypto to government use only, and the penalty
for a private citizen caught with a copy of PGP is civil forfeiture,
heavy fines, and prison. To insure compliance with said laws, further
directives have been instituted allowing the CryptoPolice to monitor
every conversation, written or verbal, and to invade your home at any
time to search for anything that might be the basis for illegal encryption.
Your country's prison population, something on the order of 5% of your
population, doubles, further unravelling your social programs as more and
more scarce public money goes to maintain a outdated and ineffective punitive
system. The underground crypto market blooms, and organized crime takes the
biggest slice of the pie, bribing public officials to overlook illegal
activities.

Unrealistic you say? Hardly. What i have just described has already
happened in your country, just replace the word "crypto" with the word
"drugs". Did the "war on drugs" work? Again i say, hardly. What supporters
of the "war on crypto" propose will be even worse, an abrogation of your
civil rights to the point of extinction. You'll be as "safe" from childporn
as the WOD made you "safe" from drugs.

-- 
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Mike Nemeth       VORT Computing      Calgary, Canada