[ExI] Exi JKC Political Posting Final Warning

[John Clark]

On Fri, Aug 21, 2020 at 8:34 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:


> *> I fear the whole notion of Patriot Act is too popular with the holders
> of power, regardless of party,to let go of it. *


I agree with you. We already had sufficient laws on the subject before 911,
the problem was not lack of laws it was lack of competent implementation of
existing laws. The Patriot Act was not needed and it should be repealed.
But a foreign government's intelligent service massively interfering with
our presidential election is a legitimate cause for concern and a FBI
investigation. And the Republican controlled Senate just concluded that it
was not a hoax, there really was massive interference by Russian
intelligence operatives in the 2016 presidential election.

> *From here it goes to stealth encryption, which has been on my mind for
> some time. *


Encryption has always been on my mind. Remember the Clipper Chip? Back in
1993 the government tried to pass a law saying all forms of encryption
would be illegal except for those that are encrypted with something called
the "Clipper Chip", and the Clipper Chip had a government controlled
backdoor built into its very hardware that allow the government to read any
message encrypted by that chip whenever they wanted. There was intense
opposition to this idea, virtually every encryption and computer security
expert on the planet who didn't work for the government opposed the Clipper
Chip; it was one of the main topics on this list at the time and I can't
remember anyone who was in favor of it, but back then the list was a lot
more pro-libertarian and anti-government than it is now. The tornado of
opposition proved to be too much and by 1996 the government gave up and the
Clipper Chip was dead.

It may have died a quarter of a century ago but when Apple and Google
started encrypting messages in such a way on their devices that even they
couldn't decrypt the stuff on them the ghost of the Clipper Chip returned.
The government decided that it still wanted a backdoor controlled by them
installed into everything, except of course for devices the government
itself used to encrypt its own internal communication. They certainly don't
want a backdoor or anything remotely like it in any of them! The government
wants the right to know all your secrets, but it doesn't want you to have
the right to know any of the government's secrets.

https://www.npr.org/2020/02/18/806887313/warrant-proof-encrypted-messages-targeted-by-trump-administration


And if this post is a "rant" or is "too political" then I don't know what
to do, just give up I guess.

John K Clark
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