[1619] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Congress & Crypto Roundup: Vote in Commerce cmte tomorrow
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eli Brandt)
Wed Sep 24 22:01:57 1997
To: crypto list <cryptography@c2.net>
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 1997 19:31:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: Eli Brandt <eli@gs160.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.OSF.3.96.970924172621.826A-100000@alcor.concordia.ca> from "f_estema@alcor.concordia.ca" at Sep 24, 97 05:43:48 pm
f_estema@alcor.concordia.ca wrote:
> > If the left hand is yelling "we must make the Internet less secure, in
> > order to preserve national security," why isn't the right hand objecting,
> > since they've already publically come to the opposite conclusions?
>
> Job security. If the public can do a better job of securing itself than
> the government agencies whose mandate is to protect us, these agencies
> will have a very hard time justifying their funding to Congress.
Sure, the FBI gets better press fighting crime than preventing it.
But does the DOD ("the right hand") do photogenic cracker busts? I'm
not aware of it. Most of DOD ought to be firmly in the good-security
camp. NSA is of course another story, and maybe they have more
in-department political clout than the info-war folks.
--
Eli Brandt | eli+@cs.cmu.edu | http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~eli/
