[Cryptography] Cryptography, backdoors and the Second Amendment

Phillip Hallam-Baker phill at hallambaker.com
Sat Oct 11 23:20:41 EDT 2014


On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 8:24 PM, Steve Furlong <demonfighter at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 7:36 PM, Alfie John <alfiej at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
>> As the US State Department classifies cryptography as a munition,
>> shouldn't the use of cryptography be protected under the 2nd Amendment?
>
> You're expecting consistency, logic, or even honesty from a government? Your
> naivete is so /cute/!

The Supreme Court only recognized an individual right to bear arms in
2008. And three of the judges in the 5-4 majority voted to stop
counting the votes in Florida in 2000.

So its a pretty thin reed you are depending on there. Scalia and
Thomas make no pretense about consistency, they just make stuff up to
suit their prejudices.

The best you could hope for by persuading the judges that crypto and
firearms are the same thing would be to see them return to the pre
2008 approach to firearms. In the wake of Sandy Hook, the only
politician to deliberately raise gun control this cycle was a
Republican who wanted to downgrade his NRA A rating to an F by backing
background checks.

As it happens, it does not matter very much because Holder isn't the
administration any more than Louis Freeh was. He only came out with
this talk after he decided to hand in his resignation. Which pretty
much tells us how much support he has for the position.

Since the democratic nominee is virtually certain to be Clinton, it is
rather more likely that the state department view will win out over
FBI, Justice and the military. Not least because Clinton is not at all
amused that due to the incompetence of the NSA, Chelsea Manning was
able to leak those embarrassing cables.

The Republicans usually give the nomination to the guy who came second
last time round. And Ricky Santorum looks as good as any of the
alternatives likely to run. I don't know what his position on crypto
is but I doubt it is a liberal one.


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