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From: dclouser@hpldsla.HP.COM (Dave Clouser)
Newsgroups: net.crypt
Subject: Re: Some comments on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (long)
Message-ID: <450001@hpldsla.HP.COM>
Date: Fri, 12-Sep-86 19:00:56 EDT
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Posted: Fri Sep 12 19:00:56 1986
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Modulating an RF carrier with an audio signal certainly makes it hard to
hear the audio part, unaided.  The reason that we don't consider this a
form of encryption is that one can buy the "decoder" cheaply and readily
(at least in the US), for many varieties of broadcast signals.  As
technology becomes availible to the public, we must adapt to the
changes.  Radio signals must have seemed pretty secure to the military
when they first were used.  But as more people began using them, the
security waned, so we developed ways to encrypt them further.  Now,
commercial companies facing the same situation are asking for legal
protection, instead of solving the technological problem.

The burden of protecting one's data should fall on oneself, and not on
possible listeners.  Laws preventing someone from taking advantage of
something they heard, that the sender did not wish known, are already on
shakey enough ground, as far as enforcement.  We don't need more laws
that are even more difficult to enforce.

All too often, as the world changes, and we can do things more easily,
people or corporations turn to the government to pass laws to protect
their old ways.  If a cable company doesn't want their broadcasts
intercepted by non-subscribers, make them difficult to intercept.  If
the first solution used is overcome by an advance in technology,
(satellite antennae), don't ask the government to pass a law to solve the
problem.  Such laws may cost more in the long run than the
technology to encrypt the signals, and they erode our freedom.  Instead,
try for a longer-term technological solution, the next time.  Better yet,
use the cheap solution for as long as you can without losing money on it,
then switch to a better one.

Passing a law against something has seldom prevented criminals from doing
it, or getting it, or using it.  The technological solutions still have to
be found, anyway.  The idea that limiting the availability of sophisticated
technology will prevent its falling into the "wrong" hands is silly.
Look how successful we've been with nuclear technology.  Sure, most
terrorists don't have nuclear weapons, but it's not because they can't find out
how to make them.  It's because it's hard to get fuel for them.  And plenty
of "wrong" hands have gotten hold of nuclear weapons, anyway.

This is my opinion, and as such, is important only to me.


Dave Clouser
Hewlett-Packard
Scientific Instruments Division
Palo Alto, CA  94304