The following are excerpts from "Privacy Journal," January, 1994 issue. Privacy Journal can be bought for $2.00 at local news/magazine stores. It's mailing address is P.O. Box 28577, Providence, RI 02908.
Desiring and take active steps to "have" privacy will be a crime. The Government and law enforcement will argue "if you are innocent and have nothing to hide, then there's no reason for you to hide anything from the government. You can trust (hah, hah) the Government. They won't misuse resources or violate your rights. Sacrificing your privacy TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT is a price citizens must pay so the Government can listen to criminals. The Government's entire premise is false. The Government argues that it has a need to have backdoor access to communications because criminals will or do use encryption? Oh really. So the majority of "criminals" use computers, modems and electronic mail as their means of communication? I don't think so. This argument implies that the majority of criminals are computer literate (enough) to use computers (and are stupid enough to have keep records of their communications. Ever heard of a one-time pad?. Remember the difficulty the U.S. had in gathering SIGNIT and ELINIT from Saddam Hussein? I believe that those people who would use computers as part of their
criminal activity employ security measures to counteract interception of their messages.
The federal government has reapproved its controversial Data Encryption Algorithm, which it hopes will set the standard for private industry as well as government computers. Some critics think that national security personnel in the government were too influential in developing the scrambling code so that they, but no one else, could decode it. The DEA will be national standard for security in computing and telecommunicatiosn for five more years beginning June 30. 58 Federal Register 69347, Dec 30, 1993. Most major computer manufacturers say that they will opt for an alternative standard developed in the private sector by RSA Data Security Inc. The RSA version is said to be beyond the reach of government decoders. The federal government could hold the trump card by making the DEA mandatory in private business."
