From: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr)
Subject: Re: Registering "Assault Keys"
Organization: UDel, School of Life & Health Sciences
Distribution: inet
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 08:57:32 GMT

In article <1d4d6uINNq7s@iskut.ucs.ubc.ca> unruh@physics.ubc.ca (William Unruh) writes:
}starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr) writes:
}>...  I
}>maintain that maximal individual liberty is the common good.  Nor am I as
}
}
}Few others do, from crime to traffic, to Internet traffic regulations.

What?

}>The main factor making our firearms violence rates to high in some places
}>are people turning to crack dealing out of desperation with ghetto poverty.
}
}Your firearm death reate was high long before crack.

True.  I spoke about the present.  Historically, our crime rate, along with
the firearm death rate, was fairly low until the 1960s, when the US went through
a wave of penal reform that changed our prisons into "correctional facilities"
and a lot of plausible theories were "tested" and not only failed, but put
our penal system more on the side of criminals as opposed to on the side of
victims that it had ever been.

}>Stable?  Like the Baltic Republics?  Where Gorbachev had the police killing
}>innocents after confiscating their registered guns?  Like Yugoslavia?  Poland,
}>where people who challenge heads of state in elections get imprisoned for it?
}>Sweden?  Where a sea change away from welfare-statism is underway in reaction
}>against having about half the workforce be paid with the taxes paid by the
}>other half?  Like Germany, which recently suffered 4% inflation, and neo-Nazis
}>riot against the welfare programs for immigrants, and which deports foreigners
}>to keep its unemployment rate down?  Like Canada, where separatism rides high?
}
}Sorry should have said like western Europe. And all of your western
}European examples are simply the normal political process. (even the
}German is hocking in contrast to the normal state in Western Germany,
}, and the social upheaval of the integration is far far greater than
}anything almost any country in the world has gone through, and the
}violence level is amazingly low considering that. Stable does not mean
}dead, it means that there are established operating ways of
}accomplishing political change. 

Inflation is probably the most destabilizing thing that can happen to a
country's economy.  If Germany, which has one of the most stable currencies
in the world, can undergo 4% inflation in a short period of time, then most
other countries are in bad shape.

}>Switzerland has citizen's vetoes.  They have the highest degree of consent
}>by the governed in the world.
}
}Which includes high levels of what many ( including you I suspect) would
}call Government coercion. However, your position seems to be not that a majority
}has the right to impose its will on the minority, but that the minority
}has the right to use arms to protect its position if threatened by the
}the government ( no matter how large the majority support of the govt
}position). 

Not really.  Consent and coercion are opposites; if Switzerland has a high
degree of consent compared to other countries, then it has a low level of
coercion by the same standard.

Frankly, I can't make any sense at all of your approximation of my position.

}>You're apparently ignorant of any distinction between command-and-control
}>regulation from the "public sector" and contractual terms in the "private
}>sector".  You don't have to deal with RSA if you don't consent to it.  If
}>you refuse to deal with the government, it deals with you.
}
}Yes I do. If I try to use public key cryptography to protect my privacy,
}the whole force of the legal system will back RSA's patents. No matter
}how much I try to avoid them RSA will coerce me to deal with them.
}Of course you may argue that patent laws should not exist, they are
}simply another coercive regulation of the Govt. In that case however,
}the evidence seems to be that the economic arguements are on the side of
}the Govt regulations.

IF you try to use the product.  You aren't forced to.  You have no choice
over whether cryptography will be regulated and how.  Regulations are imposed
by force.

}>It's not only tyrrannical, it's uneconomical as well, a fact which has been
}>established by economics much more than is necessary to overcome such shallow
}>denials as yours.
}
}Aomw govt regulations are uneconomic, some aid the economy. Trying to
}figure out which do which is part of the political process. Sometimes
}stupid mistakes get made. Especially when the arguements get reduced to
}shroll namecalling and the proponents of either side try to base their
}positions on "fundamental truths" rather than careful study and
}analysis. Which is exactly my objection to the current level of debate
}on the encryption registration. The conflicting needs and desires need
}to be aired and debated rationally, and not enveloped in a fog of "moral
}principles", or the regulations that will come are sure to be silly.

No goverment regulations are economic, none aid the economy, and we should have
separation of economy and state, not micromanage economics via politics.

If you think my positon isn't based upon careful study and analysis, you're
wrong.  Shall I reference my claims?

}>Society isn't a primary which has needs.  Society consists of the interactions
}>of individuals, and as such has no needs which aren't individual needs.  Needs
}>aren't additive.
} 
} Yes, and those individual needs include stability and security of their
} physical and economic environment, needs which can be met best, it
} seems by concerted collective and group action as embodied by governments.

That's precisely what I reject, the claim that those goals are best achieved by
those means.  Where markets are freest, stability and security are greatest.

}>Furthermore, there is not one "benefit" to be had from regulation of crypto-
}>graphy.
}
}The claimed benefit is to be able to prevent and discover criminal
}activity. Whether this benefit outweighs the benefit derived from the
}security of being reasonably certain that one can have normal private
}communications is precisely the argument going on in this group . This
}argument is not advanced by pretending that one side of the
}argument does not exist.

I don't pretend it doesn't exist, I claim that the argument is incorrect.  

That is especially true if your position is in
}the minority. ( I suspect that most of the population either could not
}care about encryption, or believe that it is something only spies or
}crooks use and should therefor be stringently regulated). In a minority
}position, telling the majority that their concerns are stupid, ignorant
}and invalid is one certain way of ensuring that you do not win. Only by
}recognising that they have valid concerns which you try to meet  or at
}least take seriously can you even hope to win. 

I haven't claimed that anyone is stupid.  I have claimed that to support
regulation of cryptography is ignorant and invalid, and have yet to run into
one concern in this debate that is valid except the prevention and discovery
of criminal activity, which I haven't challenged.  All I've done is criticize
proposed means to this end, the arguments for which have been terrible.


Tim Starr - Renaissance Now! - Think Universally, Act Selfishly
starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu

"True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten
oneself and others." - Voltaire
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.privacy,talk.politics.guns