From: ritter@cactus.org (Terry Ritter)
Subject: Re: Limits on the Use of Cryptography?
Organization: Capital Area Central Texas UNIX Society, Austin, Tx
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 09:42:43 GMT


 In <1992Nov12.214312.25542@eskimo.celestial.com>
 kurt@eskimo.celestial.com (Kurt Cockrum) writes:


>Well, if they *already* have enough evidence to put the person away
>for a long time, the contents of the disk are moot, it seems to me.

 OK, you don't like the child molesting example.

 So propose your own worst case.

 The point here is to "stand in the other guy's shoes" and use the
 arguments he could use to influence policy.  The issue is not this
 particular case, but rather how to confront and defeat such an
 argument when and if proposed.  Is an equally serious public interest
 served by having cryptography be absolutely unregulated?  Can you
 make that case to an ordinary individual or legislator?  If not, we
 risk getting a law we don't want.


>I think at some point one has
>to ask oneself whether one
>is really seeking *information* or is one just looking for a reason to
>ransack, rummage and/or trash a malefactor's possessions, or does one
>have hidden agendae or even ulterior motives?  What's *really* going on?

 I simplified the example from a supposedly true story.  I got it
 from a guy who got it by phone from a supposed law-enforcement
 source.  I don't know why they want access to the records, although
 there was a case locally a few years ago, and apparently these guys
 share information, so maybe the idea is to identify other such
 individuals, or gather further testimonial evidence.  Maybe they
 just want confirmation of barely-coherent stories from very young
 kids.  Maybe they want to identify other possible victims so they
 can get treatment or even medical testing for AIDS or VD.  I just
 don't know.


>I would defend cryptography by saying that child molesting has nothing
>to do with cryptography. Does the fact that the child-molester
>is an air-breather means we ought to regulate air-breathing?
>After all it's the child-molesting we want to stop, not the
>air-breathing/cryptography.

 I see your point, but I don't think your response would be nearly
 as effective as it needs to be.  If people who spend their lives
 trying to make such cases say our work is making this harder,
 well, that certainly is plausible, and we can expect parents,
 legislators and the press to generally believe them.

 If previously these guys (in general) kept books, or even plaintext
 databases, which assisted law-enforcement, and now cryptography
 hides this for them, we have a problem.  If this is indicative
 of various other crimes and cases, we have a bigger problem.
 It's obviously difficult and expensive to catch and prosecute
 criminals; nobody wants anything new to help them get off.


>What's with this eagerness to convict? "could at least be convicted" --
>does that mean the person couldn't be convicted on the child molesting
>charge?  What does that mean?  That the person was innocent?

 From what I can tell, these are not easy cases to make.  I can
 imagine that children may not be able to even understand much
 about what happened, let alone put it into words.  So if the
 authorities found actual records kept by the suspect, that would
 clarify things considerably, and might even eliminate the need
 for a trial.

 Again, the issue for cryptography is that this is a "public
 interest minus"; do we have a corresponding "public interest plus"
 to convince legislators, the public and the press that this
 new technology should *not* be regulated?

 Can we imagine that early "horseless carriage" pioneers liked
 being regulated?  In the end, they were, though.


>When we get down to the bottom line, I'm a selfish son-of-a-bitch who
>doesn't want to trade his freedoms for less crime.  If I have the freedom,
>I can deal with the crime my own way.  I don't need help.  I just "vant
>to be alone," paraphrasing Greta Garbo's immortal words.

 I may even agree with you, mostly.  But what *I* think is pretty
 much irrelevant.  The issue is what our legislators think, and
 the arguments we can make to support our case.  Also, of course,
 whatever we discover "good citizenship" would be with respect to
 cryptography, if that is less than complete unregulated freedom.


>Better 1000 criminals loose than one innocent person's freedom curbed!

 I'm not at all sure that most people would agree, especially in
 this sort of case.  It's a tough call, but that's the reason
 we have juries.

 I just don't think we want to make prosecution harder as an effect
 of what we do, without giving the whole situation quite a lot of
 thought.  Is it really *that* important for individuals to have
 absolutely unbreakable ciphers?

 ---
 Terry Ritter  ritter@cactus.org

Newsgroups: sci.crypt,alt.society.civil-liberty