> It can only be resolved by software and hardware designers choosing
> to integrate it seamlessly into their products with or without the
> permission of their rulers.
To some degree this is happening in the Open Source community, but in
order to make strong crypto ubiquitous for, e.g., cell phones, you
need for some cell phone manufacturer to release the source code for
their phone's firmware, and information about how to upload new
versions of the firmware, and their phone needs to be competitively
priced. To make it work without really screwing up the audio
quality, you also need the cooperation of the cell sites, so that you
can have a digital connection from phone to phone. This seems
impossible, since the people who deploy these things are big companies
with deep pockets and no vested interest in rocking the boat on
crypto.
So while your proposed solution may have some good effect, it is
unlikely to result in strong crypto being widely deployed and usable
by Joe Average. I don't think it's even likely to be widely-enough
deployed that governments will be unable to make use of the fact that
a message is encrypted to tell which messages it's important to spend
CPU time on. Unfortunately, the average Internet user at this point
just isn't a crypto-geek. You *have* to educate people about crypto
- you *can't* be elitist.
> Since the demands of digital commerce seem to require strong crypto,
> and since governments don't write much software, government opinions
> on the matter are somewhat meaningless.
Banks already have permission to use strong crypto. And they don't
care that they have to get permission - they fill out so much
paperwork already that one more form is down in the noise to them.
> In the meantime, hot rhetoric can be entertaining, relaxing, motivating for
> lurkers, and can serve to notify the opposition that there is at least one
> more redskin off the reservation. Sows FUD.
Making people who are weaker than you afraid is a good way to get them
not to attack you. Making people who are stronger than you afraid is
a good way to get them *to* attack you. I think that in this case,
the USG falls into the latter category. Many of these people have
very strong good intentions, but are more worried about protecting Joe
Average than they are about making things easy for you or for Digital
Commerce as an end in itself. The rest of the people are scarier
still. If you want to win out over these people, the way to do it is
not by raising their hackles.
As to the joy of hot rhetoric, it makes *me* feel more hopeless and
impotent to do anything about the problem. It does not give me
pleasure. I *know* that stockpiling guns isn't a solution to this
problem, at least for me, a U.S. citizen. I *don't* believe that this
battle is going to be won by engineers putting their futures on the
line, and it's *certainly* not going to be won by publically-traded
companies with deep pockets and a lot to lose. So hot rhetoric, to
me, makes me just want to unsubscribe from the mailing list and go
play piano or something. Is that really what you hope to accomplish?
I wonder if you think most people are sitting around reading about
stockpiling guns and thinking to themselves, "yeah, I wish I'd said
that?" What I think most people would *actually* say, if they read
this kind of rhetoric, is "how do I get as far away from these people
as I possibly can?"
_MelloN_
