[snip]

I have an offtopic plea completely unrelated to the above item, though. Wired is reporting @ http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46816,00.html that Judd Gregg, a Republican Senator from NH, called yesterday for a global prohibition on encryption products without backdoors for government surveillance. I'd like to urge the netops community, whom I have no other method to communicate to, to send some correspondence to your congresscritters on the issue. I'd like that correspondence to say that the idea of having backdoors in crypto is bad, but I know that some of you might disagree.

Out of all the news I've seen, (web, TV, etc) I've not seen anyone point out that they (anyone who would put encryption to devious uses) already have encryption without backdoors, what makes anyone think that they're suddenly going to comply with new laws regarding a 'backdoor key'? It hasn't worked with guns, it hasn't worked with pirated software, it hasn't worked with anything else, people who are willing to hijack planes and ram them into buildings full of people aren't going to give a second thought to violating a law regarding backdoor keys for governments.

As a side note, can anyone who has submitted correspondence to congress folks drop me a private line? I had a couple of questions.

Any correspondence should probably include at least a brief mention of the above aruement, I see this as a knee-jerk reaction, and an attempt to further careers, and limit peoples rights.

Thanks, Tim

Matthew S. Hallacy --