[FYI] Did Encryption Empower These Terrorists?

[Jim Windle]

--

On Fri, 14 Sep 2001 00:32:07   Eric wrote:
>> Cryptography insures the ability to freely
>> exchange idea, cryptography is the technology that allows
>> internet commerce and trading of financial instruments over the
>> internet.  The creation of cryptographic technologies requires
>> freedom of speech, freedom to publish results, freedom from
>
>
>By the logic of your argument, cryptography also enables *terrorists* to
>communicate "freely," not just honest citizens.  

Yes and by the logic of your argument jet airliners, telephones, hotel romms and rental cars also allow terrorists to commit there acts.

That unofrtunate fact
>outweighs the benefit to me and you that comes from our own free exchange of
>ideas.  Isn't this what the debate comes down to, i.e., benefits and
>burdens?

You make it sound like the only use for cryptography is the amusement
of a bunch of semi-grown up computer geeks playing with crypto
programs like little kid playing with a "secret decoder ring" from a
box of Cracker Jacks.  That is not the case.  If it were your argument
would carry great weight.  My point was that strong cryptography is
already a large part of our economy and is especially important to
sector providing growth and productivity improvements.  The benefits
of this are large, widespread and growing.  I live in Manhattan now
but am from a very small town in a rural area originally.  The only
way my family and friends back home have access to books other than
pulb fiction sold in drugstores is via the internet, and the commerce
that crypto allows.  This is true for millions of people and for many
products other than books which are not available in the vast majority
of this country outside the big cities with anything like the speed
and ease the internet provides.  I work in the financial services
industry which is extremely important for the economic well being of
the country.  It is also a bitterly competitive industry.  People are
aware of retail trading of stock over the internet, but far more
important is the institutional move to internet trading in equities
but more importantly and less visibly in the far larger fixed income
and foreign exchange market.  Trading these instruments via the
internet allow a great reduction in trading costs and a real
streamlining of settlement (check out the reports of the Bond Market
Association if you want to see the huge but largely invisible scale of
this trend).  Without crypto and associated technology this would not
be possible.  The same is true of business to business exchange which
allow the the manufacturing sector to reduce its cost directly by
paying less for inputs but also indirectly by being able to manage
inventory more effectively.  All this applications of cryptography are
growing and essential to the productivity growth that has driven
economice axpansion in recent years.  For this to happen this requires
the state of art crypto  to protect the financial and other
confidential information of the parties to internet commerce,  and to
continue to be secure and adapted to meet new needs.  This is done via
investigation and the free exchange of ideas.  To outlaw strong crypto
use or even to restrict research nto the topic puts all this at risk
and diminishes the lifestyle of many many people in this country.  Not
to mention the security crypto provides to public and private sector
communications in this country which can only be guarnteed by thorough
investigation of crypto systems to insure their security.  So my point
is that you do not appear to have considered all the benefits to
strong crypto to our society.  Nor do you appear to have considered
the cost of strong crypto to our enemies who are opposed not just to
America but to the sort of free, secular society with the free
exchange of ideas, vibrant economy and decentralised sources of power
that are essential to it and which are buttressed by crypto.  Or the
ability of crypto to facilitate the recruitment and management of
human intelligence sources.  I don't think this is a fringe argument,
and to the extent it is from first principles it is based on the
selection of first prinicples based on their ability to create and
sustain the type society I would like to live in.  It is most
definitely not an argument based on short term political expediency or
bureaucratic imperatives.

Jim Windle
>
>Why is it that the NSA and others want restrictions on cryptography?  It
>would be quite a claim for one to make the claim that members of the NSA do
>not know what best enables them to do their job.
>
>Having read up on some members of this list, I think it's better not to
>argue from principles liberty to the conclusion that cryptography should
>remain less fettered rather than more.  It makes the position seem fringe.
>Libertarianism is philosophically frail, and in my very humble opinion does
>not provide adequate support for the positions heretofore expressed.  The
>crypto fans would do better by following the guidance of consequentialism
>and empiricism.
>
>
>
>


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