> sommerfeld@orchard.medford.ma.us (Bill Sommerfeld) wrote:
> Unfortunately for me, that is not entirely true. The Dutch government
> is (thinking of) trying to sneak in a nasty little change in the
> telecommunications act, one in a batch of unrelated other changes.  The
> effect of this one is that encrypted communications with an unlicensed
> crypto method will be illegal. And you only get a license if the
> government can listen in (i.e, the encryption is very weak or you give
> them the keys).
> 
> And you thought Clipper was bad.
> 
	Actually Clipper IS that bad and worse. Check out gory details
	in http://www.wired.com Clipper items. To make a long story short the
	Clipper related legislation will, in the long run, make other
	encryption schemes illegal and, this is the kicker, REQUIRE a
	clipper chip in all telephone, networking, computers (including PDA's)
	and set top cable boxes. Basically anything that can have an
	electronic signal passed through it will be required to have Clipper
	installed in it. That isn't it either, the committees set up to decide
	all this where basically hand picked NSA and FBI people either directly
	responsible for Clipper or working in an area directly involved with
	Clipper.

	Looks like 1984 was about 10 years early... The truly sad part is that
	all this crap will pass in the US since the American population in
	general is (as we like to say in the Amiga community) just another
	lemming. B^(. US citizens can write to 3 congress critters, see
	http://www.wired.com, but they don't have the seniority to force the
	issue or get the chickens in the press/CNN to actually REPORT what the
	REAL implications of these laws will be, i.e. the US government will be
	able to record and track the lives of all US citizens with the
	exception of Grizzy Adams who doesn't use anything electronic and lives
	in the mountains...

	Privacy and liberty in the US: R.I.P. 1994, may it rest in peace. B^(.

		-Rob

#include <std/disclaimers.h>
I speak only for myself of course!
(For the benifit of the NSA/FBI droids listening in...)

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