[1669] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Extra Prison Time for Everyone: So Don't Worry?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kent Borg)
Mon Sep 29 15:39:05 1997
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 12:48:55 -0400
To: cryptography@c2.net
From: Kent Borg <kentborg@borg.org>
I have a cordless phone which uses a low-security encryption scheme to
protect its digital transmission. My next door neighbor has a different
model phone that encrypts his cordless conversations. All PCS phones use
some cryptography. All GSM phones use cryptography. ATMs use
cryptography. Keys to expensive cars use cryptography. A little like
embedded computers, it is already getting hard to do anything with a little
bit of cryptography slipping in.
So doesn't that mean that nearly any non-Amish person who commits a crime
will also use cryptography in the process? So if our prosecutors fair
about actually adding that count to the indictment, every prison sentence
will have that extra decade or two appended.
Does the sweeping nature of this proposal, plus a little bit of "equal
protection" end up making it completely impractical and so moot?
-kb, the Kent who hopes so.
--
Kent Borg H: +1-617-776-6899
kentborg@borg.org W:
"Then with daybreak not quite risen into dawn,
the night and day still deadlocked, round the pyre
a work brigade of picked Achaeans grouped."
- Homer's Illiad (7-500, Fagles tr.)
