Hacker Chronicles 2/HACKER2.BIN/1081.DECLARE.TXT

Text File | 1993-05-20 | 6KB | 112 lines

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Date: Thursday, May 20, 1993 2:18AM

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Personally, I think that this is required reading. Practically, I'd
like to think that most of you folks will comment and edit this
document to the point where each and every one of us will be proud to
sign our _names_ to it. Please forgive me for adapting a consecrated
public document for this venue, however I feel that this is the best
adaptive vehicle for this statement.

#include_statement


                   THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FROM
                    GOVERNMENTALLY IMPOSED CRYPTOGRAPHY
               Proposed to Cypherpunks-at-large, May 20, 1993

    When, in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one
people to disregard and challenge the communicative and neo-political
bands which have connected them with their Government, and to assume
among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which
the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect
to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes
which impel them to the opposition.
    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Communications
should be designed equally and, that they are endowed by their
creators with certain unalienable technical aspects, that among these,
are Privacy, Communications Liberalism, and the pursuit of Cryptographic
Freedom.  That, to secure these rights to publicly available crypto,
the Government which was once instituted among Men, and derived their
just powers from the consent of the governed, that, whenever any Form
of Government once became destructive of these ends, it was once the
Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing
its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their Communications Safety and Happiness.  Prudence, indeed, will
dictate that Governments long established, should not be changed for
light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown,
that mankind is more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than
to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the
same Object, evidences a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism,
it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government
abuses and to provide new Guards for their future communications
security.--- Such has been the patient sufferance of these
Cryptographic soldiers; and such is now the necessity which constrains
them to attempt to alter their former Systems of Government.  The history
of the present President of The United States of America is a brief
history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct
object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny and imposition over
individual rights to communicative privacy.  To prove this, let Facts
be submitted to a candid world.
    He has implemented a policy which may possibly usurp the citizens
privacy in electronic communications, which at least, will indeed
submit private communications to unjust scrutiny under his agencies
surveillance.
    He has attempted to impose these standards without academic or
public scrutiny.
    We have not been wanting in attentions to our cryptographic
practices; this is true. It does not, however, indicate that we are
guilty of crimes of any sort.  We have alerted our governmental
representatives, from time to time, of attempts made by their
legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.  We
have reminded them of the circumstances of our professional and
private idealisms.  We have appealed to their native justice and
magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common
kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt
our connections and correspondence.  They too have been deaf to the
voice of justice and of consanguinity.  We must, therefore, acquiesce in
the necessity, which denounces our united objection, and hold them, as
we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
    We, therefore, the Representatives of the Cryptographic partners
resident in the computing networks and establishments, in General
Consensus, Assembled, appealing to the legislative bodies of the
United States of America for the rectitude of our intentions, do,
in the Names, and by Authority of the good People of the Networks,
solemnly publish and declare, That the computer community is, and of
Right ought to be, Free and Independent of governmentally imposed
cryptographic restrictions; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance
to the proposals implemented by the National Security Agency, The
National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Clipper
purveyors by-and-large, and that all political connection between
them and the United States of America, and ought to be, totally
dissolved: and that, as Free and Independent communicators, they have
absolute rights to private electronic communications without
Governmentally imposed sanctions which may unethically submit their
communications to Governmental scrutiny. And, for the support of this
Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine
Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our sacred Honor.


Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?