[Cryptography] WSJ: WH wants to meet Techies in DC re encryption

[Jerry Leichter]

>>> Unwilling to dictate product specifications to some of the nation’s most successful companies, the administration decided not to push for a change in law....
>> Let’s call government dictating product specifications to companies what it is: Socialism.
> 
> Umm, actually, no.  Historically speaking it’s better known as Fascism.
I guess the sarcasm (kind of) alert after my message wasn't enough.

The point of my post had nothing to do with its actual accuracy - just as the point of the attacks on cryptography have nothing to do with *their* accuracy.  Truth and effectiveness in political debate have all too little to do with each other.

Remember when Microsoft used to attack Linux for being anti-capitalist?  Someone - I forget who - proposed using Microsoft marketing techniques against them:  Every time anyone who wanted to help the campaign mentioned "the Windows operating system", they should *always* say "the deeply flawed Windows operating system".  Repeat a phrase often enough and it becomes part of common knowledge.  This is how marketing works; this is how politics works (not that it's easy to draw a line between them any more).

The fact is, LE *is* trying to get the government to dictate how to build the products sold to you and me and all the liberals and all the civil libertarians and all the NRA members and all the Trump followers and everyone else out there.  And they are trying to dictate that they be built in ways that *hurt us as individuals*, in the name of what *they claim* is some greater good.  Stopping that isn't going to happen by cryptographers talking to other cryptographers about what a dumb idea "golden keys" are.  The most effective way of stopping would be convincing those who are the natural audience for the "help LE stop the bad guys" pitch to instead see the issue the same way they see gun control (also pushed as a way to "help the LE stop the bad guys").

This is politics now, hence not really appropriate for this list - though these political decisions will have profound impacts on how we will be allowed to deploy crypto, so *some* discussion is unavoidable.
                                                        -- Jerry