Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Dan Gillmor's

Author:Jacob Levy
Posted:9/26/1999; 2:59:54 PM
Topic:Dan Gillmor's
Msg #:11470
Prev/Next:11469 / 11471

Your comments on the following appreciated. I sent the following to Dan in response to his recent article:

Dan

Thanks for a very thoughtful article. I do find issue with one of the statements, that if "3) strong encryption will be banned outright", then "law enforcement [will] be able to crack open bad people's messages". The illegality of encryption will not stop "bad people" from using it to hide their intentions.

If you accept that fact, you can see we're not really being asked to make a choice. Bad people will have encryption in any case, so what's happening here is that authorities are trying to restrict good people's right to use encryption to enforce their privacy. I really don't know enough about US law to argue whether the right to privacy is protected by the constitution. However I do believe the justification is facetious, and that there are already sufficient laws under obstruction of justice to prosecute bad people using encryption to hide their intentions.

The rest of your article is water-tight.

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