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Philip Zimmermann and 'Guilt' Over PGP
No Regrets About Developing PGP
The Friday September 21st Washington Post carried an article by Ariana Cha that I feel misrepresents my views on the role of PGP encryption software in the September 11th terrorist attacks. She interviewed me on Monday September 17th, and we talked about how I felt about the possibility that the terrorists might have used PGP in planning their attack. The article states that as the inventor of PGP, I was "overwhelmed with feelings of guilt". I never implied that in the interview, and specifically went out of my way to emphasize to her that that was not the case, and made her repeat back to me this point so that she would not get it wrong in the article. This misrepresentation is serious, because it implies that under the duress of terrorism I have changed my principles on the importance of cryptography for protecting privacy and civil liberties in the information age.
Because of the political sensitivity of how my views were to be expressed, Ms. Cha read to me most of the article by phone before she submitted it to her editors, and the article had no such statement or implication when she read it to me. The article that appeared in the Post was significantly shorter than the original, and had the abovementioned crucial change in wording. I can only speculate that her editors must have taken some inappropriate liberties in abbreviating my feelings to such an inaccurate soundbite.
In the interview six days after the attack, we talked about the fact that I had cried over the heartbreaking tragedy, as everyone else did. But the tears were not because of guilt over the fact that I developed PGP, they were over the human tragedy of it all. I also told her about some hate mail I received that blamed me for developing a technology that could be used by terrorists. I told her that I felt bad about the possibility of terrorists using PGP, but that I also felt that this was outweighed by the fact that PGP was a tool for human rights around the world, which was my original intent in developing it ten years ago. It appears that this nuance of reasoning was lost on someone at the Washington Post. I imagine this may be caused by this newspaper's staff being stretched to their limits last week.
In these emotional times, we in the crypto community find ourselves having to defend our technology from well-intentioned but misguided efforts by politicians to impose new regulations on the use of strong cryptography. I do not want to give ammunition to these efforts by appearing to cave in on my principles. I think the article correctly showed that I'm not an ideologue when faced with a tragedy of this magnitude. Did I re-examine my principles in the wake of this tragedy? Of course I did. But the outcome of this re-examination was the same as it was during the years of public debate, that strong cryptography does more good for a democratic society than harm, even if it can be used by terrorists. Read my lips: I have no regrets about developing PGP.
The question of whether strong cryptography should be restricted by the government was debated all through the 1990's. This debate had the participation of the White House, the NSA, the FBI, the courts, the Congress, the computer industry, civilian academia, and the press. This debate fully took into account the question of terrorists using strong crypto, and in fact, that was one of the core issues of the debate. Nonetheless, society's collective decision (over the FBI's objections) was that on the whole, we would be better off with strong crypto, unencumbered with government back doors. The export controls were lifted and no domestic controls were imposed. I feel this was a good decision, because we took the time and had such broad expert participation. Under the present emotional pressure, if we make a rash decision to reverse such a careful decision, it will only lead to terrible mistakes that will not only hurt our democracy, but will also increase the vulnerability of our national information infrastructure.
PGP users should rest assured that I would still not acquiesce to any back doors in PGP.
It is noteworthy that I had only received a single piece of hate mail on this subject. Because of all the press interviews I was dealing with, I did not have time to quietly compose a carefully worded reply to the hate mail, so I did not send a reply at all. After the article appeared, I received hundreds of supportive emails, flooding in at two or three per minute on the day of the article.
I have always enjoyed good relations with the press over the past decade, especially with the Washington Post. I'm sure they will get it right next time.
The article in question appears at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A1234-2001Sep20.html
-Philip Zimmermann
24 September 2001
(This letter may be widely circulated)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP 7.0.3iQA/AwUBO69F2sdGNjmy13leEQIn+QCg2DjDeyibtRe61tUSplSAobdzAqEAoOMF ir3lRc4c1D/0Mmmv/JtP/E73 =HmRO
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Only their users. And remember, good and evil are relative. Not everybody thinks like you do.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Do you regret not calling PGP something like `Knife` or `Law`, so the clueless would perhaps be more likely to be aware of the fact that it could be used for good AND evil?
I wonder if Bush Sr or Clinton are overwhelmed with feeling of guilt over tens of thousands of East Timorese being slaughtered with US weapons.
Is an example of the kind of cool head that will prevail.
No bellrin' pain and threatening lawsuits. I am once again pleased that some folks are able to keep their wits about them in stressful situations.
Go Phil!
We who live in the D.C. area are very familiar with the Post's penchant for "manufacturing" stories where none exist. Mr. Zimmerman unfortunately was the party on the receiving end of the editorial foul play in this particular case.
/.ers are.
As a community, we should recognize that the Post as well as other news media outlets are NOT in their line of work to provide complete and unbiased coverage of events. They are in business to make MONEY, and that is a goal that creates in and of itself conflict of interest with reporting the truth in most (if not all) cases.
I wish the readership of the Post was going to be privy to Mr. Zimmerman's clarifications in the same way we
The genie of encryption is out of the bottle and the only thing laws can do is to make criminals of even more of us. How do they plan on enforcing the use of 'safe' encryption? Do they really think we would be stupid enough to put "Encrypted Message" in the subject of an email? Without that, it just looks like any other message.
Now that the encryption tools, which are not evil, but can be used for such just like a car or a hammer or a computer or virtually any other useful thing, are out there with full source code and all, does anyone seriously think the nasty bad men
1) will upgrade to the new CIA-approved encryption technologies, should they pass, or
2) will not be able to extend the previous technology as computers get faster
The genie is out of the bottle. All we can do is allow government to pry into the lives of honest, law abiding citizens with new back doors.
It's the same as *strict* gun control - criminals already won't follow the law, so they aren't going to suddenly turn in their guns if they become illegal. Oh, guess I'll have to find a new way to break the law, now that guns are illegal.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
Everyone's been lashing-out at the wrong people lately (all Islamics, Zimmerman, ...). They just don't know where to direct their anger. But as long as we know they're not justified, it's not so bad.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
I really ahte when people equate tools to the evil done by SOME men with these tools.
If you think about it, there are very few tools that cannot be used for evil purposes.
I'm sure that Alexander Grahm Bell isn't sorry he created the telephone just because some people use it to set-up bank jobs and murders!
The problem the US has is that the media has blinded many of us into equating tools and the people who use them.
-Are planes bad just people some nut-cases used them to crash into the WTC?
-Are guns evil because bad people use them?
-Is nuclear power evil because a bomb can be built from similar technology?
-Are SUV's evil because the government has forced other cars to be small, light and inherently unsafe?
I say an emphatic, "NO!"
I do everything the voices in my head tell me to...
What do you think about the idea of having government backdoors in crypto standards?
If they hadn't invented the airplane, none of this would have happened, right?
In fact, it's clearly Bernoulli's fault - if he hadn't told everybody all that business about particles in motion exerting less pressure to the sides, none of this would have happened.
No, Phil, if you hadn't invented it, someone else would have. You're on the right side. Tools are not evil and privacy is important, even when abused. Don't give it another thought. Be strong.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
Although I don't use pgp on a daily basis I do occasionally use it and wish that more businesses supported it for use in email. I would much rather encrypt personal information being sent to a company but they don't support it.
Is there any plans for improving pgp's ability to incorporate itself into email programs and other forms of internet communications that will make it easier for companies and end users to use?
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
Hotmail? Internet Cafes? Who needs encryption when you can walk into a cafe and log on to agad435q3@hotmail.com and use keywords instead of blatant text?
Sheesh. I mean there may be a lot of guilt to spread around, but this is ridiculous.
air and light and time and space
It is obvious (at least to me) that you do not support adding backdoors to encryption software.
My question is: is this a true statement (in light of recent events) and do you personally believe that the current maintainers of the PGP software will be against such actions (even though they will have to comply)?
Also: how "clean" do you believe the software is (after you left)?
I am sorry to see that you were misquoted, they seem to like to do that to make their stories seem more interesting. Reminds me of Good Morning Vietnam.
When I read that article in the Washington Post, I was a little concerned to read that he felt that way and I truly appreciate the corection.
Nevertheless, seeing the importance of vocally protecting our privacy rights in this important time, I recently began using PGP at work as well as at home. I don't send encrypted email messages, because most of the recipients of my email messages are not skilled enough to use or care about encryption. But I do try to spread the word about pgp by signing every message I send out.
If we don't make efforts to maintain our liberties, we will lose them. We have not gained eight hour work days and the freedom to use strong encryption by the grace of our employers or of the government. We have gained every freedom we have through hard, bitter struggle. We can never forget this.
hyperpoem.net
I was very skeptical of that article. My question: Has the Washington Post apologized or printed a correction? Better yet, have they offered to run your comment as an op-ed? They really should.
sulli
RTFJ.
What strikes me about this tragic disaster is the way government is targeting technologies that are not connected with the crime, simply because the implication that they could be used is there, using the need to protect the people as a hollow justification to remove our rights.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I use pgp routinely for discussions between me and other memebers of my group (anarchists for life), and it is not like we are planning bombings of abortion clinics or the like (we are peaceful towards all humans), but we are afraid of another big brother session like that imposed by bill clinton and janet reno. If you don't know what I'm talking about you have watched too much network news.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Sooner or later, we have to realize that we can not paralize society by protecting it against what either the malicious or stupid might do.
K
I was just wondering, how do you think we could keep terrorists at bay if they use PGP to communicate (though I think they use more low-tech meathods) while keeping our liberty and privacy?
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Just another example of the press printing what they're told to print, rather than the facts.
Expect more hate mail as people start to see how "evil" good crypto is. They already believe guns are evil. Of course, cars are amoral, even though they kill a lot more people. That's the power of the press.
Personally, I aim to be encrypting (or at least digitally signing) all my email by the end of the year. (Just starting to get the hang of it now).
I'm sorry to hear about the misrepresentation. I'm sure as well that they will do better next time. It's very important that your reaction to this mistake wasn't anger, which is what I'd have expected of a lot of people. Anyway, here's my question:
To what point would you go with PGP? For example, if it were outlawed, or you considered your life to be threatened through some government's outlawing of it, would you stop working with it, or supporting strong crypto? And if you would actually "go underground" if you sincerely believed that it would help people's freedom, do you think it would matter?
What I mean is... do you think the internet(email, freenet, www, etc) could still be seen as a place where people can somehow communicate and share information, even under a regime that tried hard to stop that information being shared?
Couple honest questions I would like to ask within this thread for clarification on this issue?
1. What are the uses of cryptography as a "Human Rights Tool"?
2. If in fact tools such as PGP are used by terrorists, how do governments protect against this?
Any information provided would be greatly appreciated.
Awesome!
This isn't a question for Zimmermann, it's a question for anybody who knows. What can you do when, like him, you're misquoted in by a journalist?
From the sounds of it, he did everything you could expect someone to do to avoid being misquoted. He emphasized to her he did not feel "overwhelmed with guilt", had her read the article to him over the phone before it was published, and was still misquoted thanks to an editor.
I imagine in certain circumstances you could sue the newspaper for libel, but what else can you do? What are your rights to: 1) not sound like a complete moron, 2) not be quoted out of context, 3) not be misquoted, 4) not have words put in your mouth.
And while we're on the topic, another question for the masses. From what the DoJ and others are doing, I'm getting less and less willing to send my email in plain text. The problem is that my technically unsophisticated friends don't have PGP, and I'm afraid it might be too tough for them. I know I could point them at hushmail (http://www.hushmail.com/), but are there any other good options? Also, what good arguments can I use to convince them it's worth the effort?
Btw, by "technically unsophisticated" I mean one until a couple of months ago was using a 486 and windows 3.1. I can't expect them to switch to Linux yet, but I want to help them find a good way to use pgp.
The idea is seriously being canvassed in the UK, of making it a criminal offence to send strongly encrypted material by email, or to put it up on a web page. Could such a law be enforced ?
Nor in general, any mainstream media outlet. What a bunch of court hangers-on! Especially in Washington, D.C. I do rely on them for the general news, but the usefulness is in reading between the lines to find out what the truth is.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Obviously after developing one of the most profound applications in the computer world (take all the complex problems of high-speed encryption over insecure channels and bundle them into an easy to use program), we have come to a self-evident belief that you support cryptography. But with the US government already in over react mode, and consider weakening crypto after years of progress in the other direction, we find ourselves in a nasty situation. And though the answer is obvious that we need to persuade a vote against anything like this, I am led to believe that you have more experience in such things than the majority of the people on this site. So we ask, exactly what is the best method to ensure that your complaints are both heard and regarded as something other than raving lunacy.
SIG: HUP
I'm glad for the clarification. Even if pgp was used by terrorists (and AFAIK there is no evidence it was), Phil is no more culpable for the attacks than the manufacturers of boxcutters.
My question is, will export regulations help at all? By 'help', I mean 'accomplish what the US Government wants to happen', which I assume would be reducing the strength of encryption available outside the US. The only way I can see export regulations helping is if the large majority of R&D into encryption is done inside the US. Do you know how much work is done inside and/or outside the US in the field of encryption, and would cutting off US encryption research from the outside world (assuming that is possible via regulation) have a major impact on encryption available out of the US, or an impact on the field of encryption itself?
Wanting to put back doors in crypto is just like a lot of the firearm control laws to me. What the people that want them don't realize is that criminals DO NOT follow laws. If I'm going to go shoot someone do you really think I'm going to get a gun the legit way and fill out the paperwork? If I'm going to encrypt my email for terroristic purposes, am I really going to use a tool with a back door?
NO! So it just wastes time and costs everyone money.
Do you plan on limiting who can purchase your product and do you plan on implementing backdoors whether or not they are required? That's my question. :)
As I understand it, with limited cryptographic knowledge, the use of a one time key for encryption is the ideal situation. Why is there such a fuss over these tools when someone could simply XOR their message with say the data from a known music CD or the like. Wouldn't this almost completely protect the information ?
I wonder why the reporter didn't think to ask the CEO of Boeing if he is tormented by feelings of guilt? After all, the attacks showed us that he makes his living selling giant flying bombs that Very Bad People can use to kill thousands of our people in one fell swoop. Surely he must agree that he and his company have blood on their hands, right?
Of course not. Boeing isn't responsible for this tragedy, and neither is Phil Zimmerman (and kudos to Phil for standing up and saying so). Boeing's aircraft have contributed immensely to our national economy by helping make easy commercial air travel possible. Strong crypto has contributed immensely to the economy by helping make the online world a safe, secure place to do business. Both have been misused by evil men to do a great wrong; but they are just tools, with no moral implications beyond those transferred to them through the hands of those who wield them. To place the blame anywhere else is to absolve the monsters behind the attack of the full weight of their crimes.
-- Jason Lefkowitz
Read my blog.
What's worse than encryption in the wrong hands? No encryption for anyone. That leaves everything a free for all for all terrorists and crackers.
I'm happy that I can use encryption to communicate, especially when dealing with my computer's security. Regretfully, these tools may have been used by bad people, but encryption has prevented many magnitudes of more trouble from being possible. Its good that we have these tools and I have many great thanks to those who advocate their use and security.
Agreed! I'm sure that the Wright brothers, Diesel, Sir Whittle, and others feel no guilt for the actions of criminals.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I know a lot of questions, but I'm curious to know how you feel after all that you have been through.
.
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
I found an
article here that says that
blaming you for providing encryption to terrorists is like blaming spoons for Rosie O'Donnell being fat. How in the world do you react to this reality statement?
If you want to tell the Washington Post that you feel the article did an injustice, you can write to letters@washpost.com. They did not have Ariana Cha's email available on their website, but her email is ariana@intercom.com (from people.yahoo.com).
Just another example of human tendancy of people wanting to blame somebody else. Its all too easy to do that. "It was this , that, him, her. Problem solved... NOT".
Humanity is wonderfull aint it.
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
PGP users should rest assured that I would still not acquiesce to any back doors in PGP.
How far are you willing to go for this... jail? What will happen to PGP when it is unlawful to distrbute strong crypto without a back door?
----------
while (alive) { Work(); PayTaxes(); Eat(); Sleep(); }
Bool
Since the NYC tragedy I've found that the media has gone berzerk; losing all ability to provide rational and impartial coverage of the situation.
Despite lacking confirmation from official sources that encryption played a pivotal role and (more worrisome!) despite lacking proof, it seems that the collective mind of the media has fixated on encryption as the reason the terrorists were successfull.
Obviously without the airplane this tragedy could never have happened, yet nobody blames the Wright brothers. Why do you think a double standard is being applied to your work and encryption tools in general- when (like the airplane) the potential for good *far* *far* outweighs any potential for bad?
...implying that the terrorists had likely used PGP, when there is no evidence at all that this is the case.
There is justification in someone's mind, else it wouldn't have happened. Not saying it's a good justification, it isn't, but they felt it justified. Which proves the bankruptcy of their ideas.
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My own position is confused and contradictory. I see personal communication mechanisms and security a force for good. I think that US interests would actually be served if everyone in Central Asia had the ability to communicate privately and securely with anyone they wish to. I also believe that it is a proper part of the job of governments to spy. I have problems reconciling these views.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
i agree with some opinions here,
there is always a bad party that
abuses thoughts and ideas of others.
and events should not change good
ideas, even like the last one.
i can take a knive and use it to eat
an apple. but i can also use it to
kill people.
cryptography is a method,
and it is no reason.
-zahnd
You obviously have quite a bit of experience in influencing legislation and policy in the US. In your opinion, what is the most effecive way for "John Q Public" to help influence public opinion and legislators?
PGP can be used by people living in countries with oppresive goverments to communicate in a manner that will not place them in jeopardy for their ideals and principals.
You don't. Privacy and human rights can be very easily trodden upon by surveillance such as "back doors" being put in encryption software.
Terrorist attempts require more than simply chatting about it via the internet; supplies, planning, and other things are needed to actually execute such an attempt.
I would suggest actually trying to prevent terrorists from executing terrorist actions through greater airport and border security. The government is currently stepping up efforts to control what is brought on-board airplanes, which should help stop further attempts. Our airport security measures were, as a whole, inconsistent and lax, which is a much more feasible thing to blame than PGP.
"He may look like an idiot, and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot." - Duck Soup
Are you seaking some sort of remedy from the Post? A retraction, or a chance to submit a rebutal?
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
%subject%
3.243F6A8885A308D313
Situations like this are pretty much the reason the Post has an ombudsman.
As Zimmermann says, the Washington Post usually takes accuracy very seriously. I'm sure they will give this the attention it deserves.
Zimmerman, the blood of the dead and injured is upon your hands as much as it is on the hands of the suicide bombers. You bear a large part of the responsibilty, and that terrible stain will be upon your hands for the rest of your life. No matter how hard you scrub, the stains of innocent blood will mark you forever.
A question: what is your view of gpg? Have you used it?
Privacy of communication appears to be extremely important. My private conversations should only involve the persons intended to hear them, or many ideas might never be expressed.
Privacy for citizens carries much more weight than privacy for organizations. Government agents who wish secrecy can afford many levels of secrecy to ensure private communication. Political groups, like terrorists, can also hide their actions through secrecy. Removing secure communications from normal citizens in an attempt to discover political groups is horrible doomed to only remove private speach from the citizens.
There is, however, one divide where people are lost from this equation. Currently private communication requires money. PGP is not available to the vast majority of those under the poverty line. What, if anything, are you doing to bridge this gap?
>PGP users should rest assured that I would still not acquiesce to any back doors in PGP.
It's really good to have a veteran with the possibility of being a champion for privacy issues. Afterall, we all know for a fact that Phil's willing to run the gauntlet in defense of what he thinks is right... I would think that's been proven.
I just hope it won't be necessary to go to the lengths that happened last time.
'Life is like a spoonful of Drain-O, it feels good on the way down but leaves you feeling hollow inside'
The PGP signature at the end of this article is unverifiable. Can you please link to a version of the article with proper begin/end borders and whitespace preserved?
I wonder if the manufacturers of the planes and the "box cutters" are also overwhelmed by feelings of guilt.
I wonder if Intel has been getting hate mail for developing technologies that can be used by terrorists?
The two most common things in the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity. -- Harlan Ellison
Lars, please, theres a time and a place for Metallica lyrics, and frankly I dont think its *this* thread on *this* site...
The free floating wrecking ball
Crypto doesn't kill people.
People kill people.
...
Encrypt Bears!
Krispy Cream is people
How do you feel about PGP with a backdoor for government use?
I like fire ants. They are very spicy!
"Let me assure all PGP users that all versions of PGP produced by NAI, and PGP Security, a division of NAI, up to and including the current (January 2001) release, PGP 7.0.3, are free of back doors. In all previous releases, up through PGP 6.5.8, this has been proven by the release of complete source code for public peer review." (http://www.pgpi.org/files/PRZquitsNAI.txt)
Which version of PGP does Phil presently use and which does he recommend to friends and collegues?
you fool, admit you didn't read his letter.
Christ what an ego, well, some of us DID deduce his thoughts and opinions from the not-so-vague statement he made. Moron
Ok this point has already been pressed in earlier posts, but it has a good point. It's just a tool! In another scope, an airplane is also another tool. It's main purpose was to help transport people all over the world in a much quicker and easier fashion than say a car or boat. It's been a very good tool in usage for many many years, but you still run the risk of getting the wrong hands taking over the plane. What do we do about it? Why don't we just put a new transmitter and receiver into these planes so that when the government doesn't think their flying appropratly, then the government can start flying the plane remotely? . I'm sorry but bad people will do bad things, so why punish the good? I don't think I want a polotician to decide if the data I'm sending is being used for good or bad. Or I don't want a polotician to find some good information in my encrypted data to sell that information to a competing company (which I can just about guarantee would happen). Lets quite crisizing the good tool known as PHP just because you get those few bad apples that use it for bad things.
god i hate to even consider a conspiracy theory (i prefer to spend my time laughing at paranoid people deluding themselves with their own conspiracy theories) but how much of a chance is there that someone political stepped in and rewrote the article to help sway congressional and peoples opinions about encryption back doors? I know that is's a long shot, but i though it might be worth some thought.
The government always needs someone to blame. If a person gets shot, then the gun manufactures created an evil tool. If a gang is involved, then rap music made them do it. They are always looking for a scapegoat. Just because someone abuses a tool, doesn't mean the tool is inhearantly evil. Otherwise, everything would be evil, because everything can be used for a destructive purpose. I can not think of anything that can not be used to cause injury in one way or another.
Do you have any wish or intent to have the Post make a correction to their article? I don't know any of the numbers, but it seems to me that a lot more people read the Post than Slashdot. Personally I would want the Post readers to know what I really said, and I also think that the Post would be obligated to make such a statement, to maintain their own 'integrity' and accuracy.
Your
The Wright Brothers' families being hassled by Americans for creating aircrafts.
Mr. Zimmerman,
Just curious your views on the implications of a back-door (supposedly) available to only government authorities? Considering the distributed.net-type projects aimed at how safe would internet commerce be if there existed a key that unlocked all messages?
Thanks!
D. G. Meyer
"Deus lo vult!" was a few centuries ago.
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Did you upgrade your kernel to 2.4.10 yet?
X=constant
n=derivable variable
sin(pi*x/(2*n))+sin(pi*n/2)=0
If anybody knows how to simplify this, it would be very helpful. Thanks.
Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
I think the terrorists used the much more secure Adobe eBook ROT-13 encryption scheme.
If so, maybe we should consider Dmitri a hero for developing software to defeat terrorism.
ÕÕ
Specifically, if I were to take a picture with my digital camera, then bury my encrypted text in it using steganography, then send that picture to my friend via e-mail, is it possible for a third party who's intercepted that email to determine whether or not it has encrypted information in it? I'm not talking about the possibility of breaking it, just whether or not they can detect that I've done something ostensibly illegal.
Thanks.
No if the terrorists had copy written their plans and then encoded them would they be protected by the DMCA ?
As long as we're attacking the symptoms and |not the root causes, let's build more prisons too. It only makes sense - rather than trying to figure out why people are committing violent crimes and work on prevention, just throw em in the lockup for five to ten! Yeah, it'll obviously work, because criminals always think about the results of their actions before they act ... don't they?
... think - why was there such immense hatred in the first place, and what can we do going forward to lessen it?)
Education, tolerance, and freedom are the keys. It applies to the terrorists as well as to your everyday criminals. Stop the problem before it starts, and you won't have a problem.
(Yes, when it's too late, like now, something else must be done. But that doesn't change the need for some forward-thinking
Islamics? Thats a word now?
A religion = Islam.
A follower of Islam = Muslim.
There, simple isnt it. In lesson 2 we`ll be discussing that just because most terrorists are Muslim, it doesnt necessarily follow that most Muslims are terrorists. So dont go attacking that guy who dresses differently to you just yet...
Greetings,
Thank you Phil for producing PGP, for standing up for what you really believe, and for re-evaluating your beliefs after this tragic event.
Given the use of techniques like steganography and Chaffing and Winnowing to hide messages with or without encryption, and the many ways of communicating without openly passing a message (codes, one time pads,...) laws on cryptography are obviously pointless as far as stopping terrorism is concerned.
So, What would you like to see being done? What measures do you think might be effective against terrorism?
I don't have any answers, but I haven't seen any that seem effective to me either.
Thanks,
Z.
-- Under/Overrated is meta-moderation, and therefore is Redundant.
> I can only speculate that her editors must have taken some inappropriate liberties in abbreviating my feelings to such an inaccurate soundbite.
You can speculate what you like, but the fact remains that the paper blatantly misrepresented Phil's opinions in order to further the current agenda of cracking down on civil liberties.
This distortion is not a coincidence, it's probably not deliberate either, but people who are sufficiently indoctrinated hear what they want to. Mainstream media is even more laughably distored than normal at the moment. Suddenly the media is full of convenient statistics "80% of US population favors back-doors in encryption". And what percentage of the US population has any idea what the hell that means ? What was the queston "Do you favor laws that make it harder for terrorists to communicate in private ?" or "Should it be illegal for people to try to stop others from monitoring their communication ?"
The media is just as accurate about other stuff. They laud George Jr's "bravery" without a trace of irony, like the jester in the Holy Grail "When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled...." Meanwhile the cowardly terrorists were cowardly
giving their lives for their beliefs. Fanatical assholes, sure, but cowardly ?
The distortion is much worse than you think. The entire language is adjusted in a thoroughly Orwellian fashion. When people on our side die, the "terrorists" cause the "murder of innocent, men, women and children". Fine, this is accurate. However, when we do start beating up on Afghanistan. "Military commanders" will replace "terrorists" and "inevitable collateral damage during surgical strikes" will replace "bombing civilans". It's very difficult to reason about something when the terms are properly loaded.
The language molesters will be hard at work over the next few months. The funny thing is that when we hear blatant distortions in the other direction, (eg "The great satan") we laugh at the stupidity and talk about how these people have been brainwashed into believing all sorts of nonsense. There is a widespread belief that the terrorists killed themselves because they believed they would be rewarded with 72 virgins in heaven. It's time to reconsider who has been brainwashed.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Version: 5.5.3a
qAK3BDw8mEgVeqpXhlOt9+3ka+/83kjIhaimD0Z/N4kLQ2cNqp f r U8k 4+9k
6t5kIDnxmOHCz923hplLe7SU9w/y7gEybDMLZSJPQlLkCXErk
F538ehS4pngftGwEyv+Gx7/KaiMdkaKLAfghanistan8+3qWk
i8eRFgEyvka/8+qDXcoMJyull9+aZAs0t7Sucks+ka0t/tPRq
Ens=
=enUj
-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
In case they decide to change it or post a retraction (everybody contact the editors?), here's the quote right now:
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
what, would you say, is the flaw to backdoor'd crypto and how would you explain this defect to someone who lacks a wide knowledge of computers, especially in light of recent events?
thanks, _f
If you had the time & inclination to write a PPGP (Probably Pretty Good Privacy
2) With regards to those who "artistically" adapted your "guilt" remarks, do you plan on hanging them by their toenails, or using them as shark toys off the Florida coast?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
As usual, it comes down to money. Case in point, while strong crypto, the internet, or your computer could possibly used for nefarious purposes, I can think of one and only one purpose for using a gun. And yet politicans will uphold this civil liberty with the tenacity of a pit bull. Why? Well that's simple, you have groups like the NRA pumping millions of dollars into them. And it's all guilt free......
It appears to me that the US government didn't have the capability to react to unencrypted, even overt acts by these terrorists. After all, they entered the country using their real names (mostly), rented apartments, used credit cards, made airline reservations, and took flight lessons. In some cases they did all this while they were on a "watch list". I suspect that the encryption reaction is a knee-jerk diversion to focus attention away from truly pathetic intelligence processing.
I've seen reports that they sent email unencrypted, and used information hiding, but I haven't seen anything besides speculation that they actually used encryption.
Have you seen any specific evidence that indicates these terrorists actually did use PGP (or any other encryption, for that matter)?
Never negotiate with journalists. You have access to the Internet, write your own article and post it on the appropriate website. Word will get out to your sphere of influence, those at the periphery can be pointed there. Point the journalists at the article if they won't leave you alone and if that fails get the law involved.
This misquoting is absolutely incredible in scope. I've been afraid of being misquoted before, but this quite well takes the cake. The individual writing the article wanted to write ONE THING smacking about the crypto community and perhaps even programmers in general, and took the quotes WAY out of context AND pretty much just took sentences and cut out all the words that he needed.
This is like me saying
"So, if I get my girlfriend a cat, this is what she wants for Christmas?"
and being quoted as
"My girlfriend" "is" "a cat."
Frankly, I am somewhat puzzled that the company which manufactures the beard clipper used by one of the terrorists on the plane has not brought a message of apology to the world...
Seriously: Are we going to relate every little thing in this world to the terrorism act of lately? I am just getting tired of reading so much BS about everyone trying to get some sort of visibility after the tragic events: the CNN talking heads, Bush the Donkey, the Pope, Billie Brown the SF mayor, Larry "Devil" Ellison, Richard "stadder" Stallman and now Ziziman.
What's next? People around me, are almost starting to feel sorry that they DIDN'T know anyone who died in the attacks. I want to throw up when I hear that.
This is human vanity at its best. Welcome to the real world!
This is a stupid comment. Pgp does many things, and there are times when I've wanted to make sure an email is private. Pgp can also be used to digitally sign a message, verify data, etc. If we were to outlaw encryption, only criminals would have encryption.
W.Kid
I take no responsibility for what I say. Even though I'm never wrong
Also, I would like to thank you for PGP. Indeed, it is making the world a better place, and to me it is even more apparent in light of recent events.
Kjetil (Keyid: 6A6A0BBC)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
The secret keyring in practically every implementation of PGP leaks information off the secret key ring.
Not the messages, but something that can comprimise the existance of the user.
The identities on the keyring can be listed without a passphrase.
This means that if you have a standard keyring with your personal ID and you are also "Chairman X" of the local committee for doing things the State does not like, if they obtain your keyring, they can show that you and "Chairman X" are most likely the same person.
All it takes is "pgp -kvv secring.pgp" and I can tell you all of the aliases and alternate identities that you use.
Currently, using multiple secret key rings is a pain. Most implemenations of PGP do not have the ability to add a master passphrase on the keyring.
BTW, people have been linked to their nyms by just this method. (Ask Carl Johnson. He was a canadian who spent time in an American jail because he said something through a nym that the government found threatening.)
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Although it is too early to tell, do you support any form of civil disobedience to new laws that restrict cyryptography usage? In essence, if the government orders that the next version of PGP include back doors, do you plan to disregard the law for personal or political reasons? Furthermore, do you believe that the liberty to use encryption is threatened enough that users of PGP should refuse to accept back doors and continue using the current version?
-- Solaris Central - http://w
Phil,
Do you think organizations like the NSA should be able to try and crack any encrypted messages sent, or should the attempt at cracking only come with standard legal proceedings, such as a warrant?
This isn't much of an issue in the age of (nearly) uncrackable encryption, but with the promising development of new architectures, such as quantum computing, the scales could indeed tip back the other way, even if only temporarily.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
Perhaps after outlawing cryptography they should outlaw planes. Then maybe will the ignorant feel the analogy.
Oh, I also forgot sin(pi*x/(2*n))=-1
Please help, thanks.
Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
and when some group of murderers targets you and you sit by and snub him, then he indeed kills many of your brothers, you will wake up and realize it is time to remove him from the earth. Freedom requires vigilance. Tolerance does include those that hurt, kill or force others to live against their own wishes.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
e Li NX+WKIYnsAn2Yw
Hash: SHA1
You were, of course, correct 10 years ago when you guessed that PGP
would become a tool of the oppressed. But even huge, lumbering
totalitarian governments are not so slow as to miss the fact that
people are avoiding their censors. My guess is that in many of these
oppressive countries, the use of encryption products like PGP has
become, in itself, an offense.
Have you looked into developing steganographic or other concealment
tools so that such users can veil even the existence of a message?
Has NAI?
I understand that with an open, published steganographic method, any
government could still detect messages, but this would at least
massively increase their censorship workloads, forcing them to
process every image, or possibly every text message, looking for a
palimpsest. What's more, if such a method were designed to forego
the usual identification headers, so that only the enciphered message
itself was included, would you not end up with a hidden message
difficult to detect even when 'looking right at it', so to speak?
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.8 for non-commercial use
iQA/AwUBO69zC5Tq1bXoStsJEQI6GgCgnKR4q9qo9gB8Oht
/AlFZz2I0GqIhYkUpFk1XRx/
=fpit
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
The attacks against encryption tools are an attempt to divert public attention away from what appears to be a humongous bungling by the agencies trusted with the protection of the airways.
Security at many airports in the country was incredibly lax as officials were averse to instituting procedures that would inconvenience the travelling public and cause a political backlash. One collegue, for example, described to me a scene at one airport where the wife of one passenger passed a bag over the fence to her husband which he had forgotten.
This tragedy occured because "we didn't think it could happen to us". That is all. And the solution isn't an unprecedented increase in big brothering but determined mind to once and for all dispose of US Isolationism-- what happens around the world does affect the USA.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Try to decode that. Or better yet: try to put a backdoor in it. It's stupid. Will the feds try to outlaw Sindarin, Quenya, or Klingon as well? Because any language is encryption, unless you know what the words mean.
Phil,
It seems that anti-encryption/anti-strong-encryption legislation is coming, whether we want it or not.
In the emotional need to do *something, anything*, Congressmen are drafting and voting on legislation without review or testimony from folks like yourself who happen to know the technology rather than just want to give Law Enforcement broad powers.
Do you agree that we're about to be railroaded into a bad spot as far as secure communications/transactions are concerned?
Will you continue to use PGP or other strong encryption after it's existence is outlawed?
Given the worst possible future outlook with regard to strong encryption, what will you do/encourage others to do, and what is our best option for securing our communications in this case?
I hope you ask for the banning of airplanes too after seeing what they can do.
Are the proposed backdoors simply blanket weaknesses in the allowed crypto standards, or does this have something to do with how the final encrypted message is constructed? I can see some ways that the users decryption key could be incorporated into the resulting message (as an encrypted sub-message using the government's key) so that the government could recover the user's private key from any message. I'm much less certain of how you would construct an encryption algorithm that would ensure that all messages could be decrypted by both the user's private key and the government's private key.
Is there some description of how these backdoors are supposed to work?
Anyone who wants to implement laws like this is really missing the point.
If you make backdoors a law, then you will only ever be able to snoop on law-abiding citizens
Is there no-one in the govt that understands this?
any prediction if and when quantum computers might crack PGP?
When you developed and released PGP it was new and exciting. Now (excluding the current backdoor business) the crypto fight was largely been won. So what is the next fight/cause that interests you?
Suppose that using strong (read: unbackdoor'ed) crypto is made illegal for some reason.
Nice. But how could the government enforce that?
Are they gonna say "Dear terrorists, we would like you to use that newly backdoor'ed "strong" crypto program so that we'll be able to crack your message next time you plan on doing something bad"?
That's foolish. It's too late now.
Question: You've been through this mangler before - what do you think is the most effective way to talk to the govt / the masses? The polls are getting quite unnerving...
"as the inventor of PGP, I was 'overwhelmed with feelings of guilt'." - Phillip Zimmerman
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Phil, as you know I've been rallying to get support for my take on what it would take to get privacy through encryption into the hands of everyone in the world (regardless of sophistication level).
I've been in the software and systems world for 12 years, but you have a whole lot on me when it comes to security through crypto. What do you think will be the major hurdles for getting ma-and-pa-average to use crypto?
Thanks!
I believe that outlawing strong cryptography is foolish since "the genie is out of the bottle"; i.e., anyone can write their own strong cryptography system. Here's a purely academic question: Do you think the world would be a better place if strong cryptography did not exist?
allow PGP to ever have 'backdoors'? Would you leave the country rather than let the US Gov't force you into changing PGP? Could you stop them if they tried?
Would a more military state be.. required? Like the concept of preventers in Gundam Wing Endless Waltz, where there are political fire fighters who put out fires such as terrorist acts. Yet, more civilized means would be condoned.
Just food for thought, I don't have a perfect stance yet...
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
<=>
sin(Pi*x/(2*n)) = -sin(Pi*n/2)
<=>
sin(Pi*x/(2*n)) = sin(-Pi*n/2)
<=>
Pi*x/(2*n) = -Pi*n/2
<=>
x/(2*n) = -n/2
<=>
x = -n^2
Hope that helps!
He had the reporter read the article back to him over the phone, and had her make sure that was exactly the way it'd be printed. It was changed by someone to make it clear that Zimmerman somehow had changed his views on encryption; this is a pretty egregious error, don't you think? A noted encryption expert, and creator of a technology that probably *was* used to mask terrorists' communication, suddenly changes his mind in a national interview...
Hmm, idono about you, but it sounds to me like someone's got an agenda at the Washington Post.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
This brings up the old debate, if you make encryption without backdoors for govt illeagle, then only the criminals will have the securest encryption. I simply do not understand why we cannot have means to protect ourselves using, for example pgp. I would not have a problem, as I would guess anyone here, that if served with a warrant that I would not decode the messages for the goverenment officials. I don't give the government keys to my house or my car, but if I am served with a warrant, I sure as hell would unlock the doors and let them in and let them look around because I have nothing to hide. If we make it illegal, what is that going to help when the terrorists are using the encryption outside of the US? If there was a www.ArabHotmail.com (located of course physically outside of the US) what is going to stop some terrorist in America using it?
Why should he have to explain himself to anyone? All he did was figure out some math. You could just as easily blame Boeing, the pilot instructers, or Bic (the biro). Personally id like to blaime that little t[a/u]rd Bush (i don't have to have a valid reason do i?). I think Zimmermann should sue someone for harassment.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Another thought. N>=0 && n=X. Anybody know of sure fire way of doing this keeping X in the problem and solving for N, keeping N in the form of a sine wave within that closed interval.
Again,
Anybody who wants to help me, thanks.
Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
However, later in the same article, it says:
Of course, only Philip Zimmerman is qualified to comment on this. But, to me, if you read the entire article, you get a correct impression of what Zimmerman is all about. And if you delete that unfortunate sentence, I don't think that there is any problem with the article at all.
Having said that, I still think that the Post should still print a retraction or -- even better -- Philip Zimmerman's reply.
Are you afraid this might be done to you? If so, would you consider this risk higher than the one you suffered diring the last decade?
BTW, thanks to PGP's digital signature I got rid of an extremely annoying impersonator that pestered me in Usenet a few years ago. Thank you for that.
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
IANALOC (Lawyer or Cryptologist), but is a good precedent the lockpick laws? The laws may differ from state to state, but in [[Massachusetts]] it's something like...
It's not illegal to know how to pick locks. It's not illegal to have lock-picking tools. It's not illegal to pick a lock (unless you're trespassing of course). But it is illegal to pick a lock with intent to steal, murder, or break some other law.
ourpla.net is your planet
Much of the encryption restriction/key-escrow debate has focused on how it will affect society if we restrict or alter the use of strong encryption. I haven't heard much debate on whether it would even be possible to enforce the use of key escrow systems or to prevent people such as terrorsts from using strong encryption.
What are your views on this, and do you think such proposed systems could ever be enforced?
Read below. sin(pi*x/2*n) must equal -1 and be between 0 & X. Thanks anyways. otherwise, you will get .66666 and -.66666 at the top and bottom if you take the square root. I did what you did. That's easy.
Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
The Post takes accuracy seriously? You have got to be joking. No...they take percived accuracy seriously, if nobody calls the line..then its the truth.
-n = -n^2
<=>
n = 1
so x = -1 and n = 1
Hope this helps!
Firstly, I can't believe how charitably you view the post's "error". You are really going out of your way to give them the benefit of the doubt.
/. subversive underground?
Question 1: What are you currently working on?
Question 2: If backdoor-free encryption is outlawed, do you promise to create for us a kick-ass, (virtually) unbreakable version of the spammimic and distribute it through the
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
Oh well. I failed maths at school anyway!
You are not getting me. X is a constant. N is derivable, via. moving. N only exists between 0 & X so X must stay in the formula. The height of sin(pi*x/(n*2)=-1 & sin(pi*n/2) must = 1 so that something like X=91, we get 7 or 11 and no other values work. Thanks.
Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
Email acha@washingtonpost.com and let her know how irresponsible you think she is, and what a poor job of professional journalism she is doing. All I have to say is that I work with journalists, and this is one of the most irresponsible bits of journalistic BS I've ever seen.
I wouldn't expect the inventor of PGP to feel any more guilt than the inventor of the box cutters used by the terrorists, or the Wright brothers for inventing the plane. PGP is a tool. It has good uses (keeping my private thoughts and my personal belongings private) and bad uses.
There seems to be a lot of doubt about the "good" uses of strong encryption, e.g. to save lifes, create freedom, right a wrong, etc. Most people seem to adopt a "I have nothing to hide" attitude, seeing encryption as a danger rather than an opportunity. What is your favourite success story in this regard, i.e. a story where strong encryption lead to something "obviously" good (in an "American" sense of the word)?
Signed, Dr. Mabusa
Encryption isn't the crime it is the file that is encrypted that is part of the crime.
He should write the ditor about this. Given their mis-representation they owe him at least that.
I strongly agree with Phil's idea of publically available "strong crypto". Of course, this means that anyone can have it including terrorists (and other criminals).
The question: Since most of us believe that restricting strong, public crypto is the wrong way for dealing with problems such as terrorists, what would you suggest as an alternative solution for the government to use in the age of technology where crypto has made traditional wiretapping obsolete?
Hey Phil!
What if the Government legislates mandatory backdoors in cryptographic products? Can we still count on you to produce software that does not contain any backdoor access inside of it? Would you fight with the Feds again?
pi=sigma{n:0-infinity}[(1/16)^n][(4/(8n+1))-(2/(8n +4))-(1/ (8n+5))-(1/(8n+6))]
Suppose using crypto with no government backdoor gets the death penalty - this is going to stop a suicide bomber???
Furthermore, there is no cost to use it since there is no physical product. The government could concievably control every arms manufacturing plant in the world - and this would mean criminals would have to pay some stiff bribes to obtain weapons. But the investment would really pay off since law abiding citizens would be defenselss without a police presence.
On the other hand, anyone who read the Scientific American article on RSA could produce a rough program to implement it in a few days. (No PKI, but good enough for terrorists.) For terrorists with no math background, all they need is a T-shirt with the perl code.
I found the problem to your solution. 1 will always be an answer but it is not the only answer between 0 && X. I don't care about that answer, I want the other ones.
Anybody else capable of figuring this one out?
Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
While we're at it, lets blame Boeing for making the airplanes and not including a remote control system for the government.
PGP has been a powerful step in offering
the average user of things like e-mail
at least a limited form of security.
But what's the next step? What new technologies
exist on the horizon to help insure civil
liberties (privacy in particular)? It would
be interesting to here Mr. Zimmerman speak on
what the next-step technologies are in his view,
and what advantages they will offer civil society.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
Is there Any Evidence that PGP or any type of encryption technology is being used by terrorists ? (esp these recent terrorists ?)
just curious, pointers appreciated.
Arguing that all crypto should have a back door for the government, because the terrorists used crypto to secure their message, is just plain ridiculous.
If that arguement has any merrit. You might as well argue that all planes should be remote detonatable by the government incase it gets hijacked. Hey, planes were used in the attack, lets not forget that. This is ridiculous and so is the notion to add aback door to encryption.
Why?
Well, you can make sure that a person really is who he says he is, by asking him for his PGP fingerprint and checking it with his public key. This is a very important feature, for obvious reasons. Not only for the needed public key exchange, but also for authenticity. So PGP is not only for sending secret messages, it's also for establishing some level of trust between two or more parties and to ensure if a communication really originated from one of those parties.
(Now I'm probably going to be flamed by Hugh Daniels (of FreeSwan fame) because he thinks the whole web of trust thing is flawed and doesn't work in practice... Well, if people are willing to play along and able understand it, it works pretty good)
To Phil or anyone who knows:
If the governments make use of strong encryption illegal they need to enforce it by checking users' mail for signs of encryption. I know of some computationally easy tests that allow you to get a pretty good idea if a number is prime(ie Fermat). So my question is: do such tests exist for PGP-encrypted documents?
The solution, of course, is never ever talk to a journalist for any reason.
If that's such a good solution, how come professional PR firms--who know way more than you do about the pros and cons of press coverage--are frequently desperate to set up interviews with reporters and their clients?
If you want your message to get through, you have to work with the fact that reporters are in a hurry. In your interview, write their article for them with a series of good quotes. Be clear, witty, concise. Sure, it's still risky--but please, have some courage!
Why do I bring this up here? Because Microsoft can buy the best PR firms on the planet who can happily feed the press a ton of interesting stories. If people in the open-source world don't have the courage even to talk to journalists, we may as well just admit defeat now.
Good on you Phil. Well said.
/. where an opinion poll had "72%" in favor of crypto back doors (even though that was factually incorrect from the survey) clearly showing there is a political agenda to kill crypto. Your "regrets" are part of that same campaign.
My only critisicsm is that you appear blind to the Post's blatant willingness to be manipulated under the Whitehouse's new political agenda. You write off this gross deliberate misquote as an editorial "mistake" under pressure. Get real! That's wilful fantasy. The truth of the matter is that, just like the recent piece also quoted on
Again, good to read your words, but a sense of reality seems to escape you, publicly at least.
It's too hard for me, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I didn't mean to get your hopes up - sorry!!
I agree to a limited degree with the comments
about the human part of the human-tool pairing
being the part from which most evil originates.
But this does not mean all tools are devoid of
any meaning or purpose.
A sword, for example, is clearly a military
tool. Its evolution, and its purpose, is
inherent in its form. It is designed to injure
and kill.
The atomic bomb is designed to vaporize things.
Yes, you can (with some effort) envision a
situation where either of these items can be
not-used but perhaps threatened to obtain a
"good" outcome. But by their nature, if they
are ever employed, the results are not what
one would call good.
Some tools exist for no purpose other than
the infliction of damage upon another human.
Some tools cannot damage another human
practically (ie a pencil eraser). These
tools are differentiable, one from the other,
by this distinction of purpose and form and
if one wants to use the problematic concepts,
by their different potentials for doing evil.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
Their products have killed hundreds of thousands...
i've been really unimpressed with how many members of the media are handling this. the washington post story is way more interesting than it would have been without the 'twist' this was from people.com today - "Although the secretary declined to identify locations of the troops, Reuters cited defense officials as saying that they were in and near the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan. " - i personally dont need to know this and clearly its in our advantage to limit information like this. its a good thing people magazine has such low distribution in afghanistan.
axiom: A idea is weak if it
1) Applies well to a specialized and often overly simplified set of circomstance.
2) Does not continue to apply well to a more universal consideration.
Proof: Moral relativism is a weak and wrong idea
Good is the set of all actions that enhance other peoples lives.
Evil is the set of all actions that detracts or degrades other peoples lives.
Assume that for the sake of contradiction that Morality is relative, where it is okay to do evil in certain circumstances becuase it is required to degrade peoples lives who do evil to limit their ability to do evil.
This satisfies condition 1 of a weak idea since it shows validity in a subset of circumstance.
This is a contradiction since by definition limiting their ability to do evil enhances other peoples lives by not allowing them to degrade it and therefore is good. This satisfies condition 2 of the weak idea axiom, and shows it to be a wrong idea.[]
note: this is a first draft.
It would have happened anyway.
Plus, hell, why stop at Zimmerman.. Let's also look down at the makers of OS's so bad guys can do bad things with computers, hell let's also get the creators of the internet and networking allowing bad people separated by a great distance to talk to each other, also get the creators of the computers cuz bad people can use them to do bad things, hell lets also blame God for making bad people to begin with. There are we all satisfied now?
Hahaha! No it can't! All PGP can do is to hide disguise child porn and terrorist plots. Don't try to change the issue with an array of lies.
Arrays should be banned, too - they can be used to compute an IDEA cipher.
No problem. I took 2 years of calculus and still can't do it. I might be able to if I thought about it but I really didn't want to derive it myself.
Thanks anyways.
Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
Today in the shower, I was thinking about the original article.
:)
I remembered a quote from Einstein about the development of the bomb: "Had I but known, I would have been a locksmith." So, had he but known and been born 50 years later, maybe he would have been Phil Zimmerman
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
You know, I've read a lot of stuff, both here and other places, that claims that if encryption were breakable by some governmental TLA agency, that the events of Sept. 11 could have been avoided. Um, has there been any evidence yet that the perpetrators of the terrorist acts actually used any form of encryption to plan this? So far, all I see is posturing and postulating. What did I miss?
the guy who invented the box cutter. I'm sure he's just as guilty.
...from your friends in the "Homeland Defense" dept:
Only the guilty have something to hide.
RETURN TO YOUR SECTOR.
This is for PKZ.
I believe it would be in the interest of the crypto community for you to write a a clear
and concise document that even a congressman could read on the topic of cryptology.
Then we as a community could digitially sign it, and send it to our congress-persons as a petition.
The main topics you should cover would be:
1) What encryption does FOR us.
2) Who uses encryption for good reasons.
3) The problems with weakened encryption.
4) Possible economic impacts due to loss of
trusted communications.
5) How weakened encryption would be forced upon
our enemies( or how it couldnt be).
6) Synonyms like you implied to better qualify
encryption, such as "envelopes", or secruity
measures that re-iterate just what it is
that they would be weakening.
7) Point out all the ways the government ALREADY
has for "Breaking" encryption. Such as key-
stroke loggers, intercepting keys,
intelligence operations,etc.... and WHY they
are BETTER MEANS than weakening the encryption.
8) Point out what other tools they should have
taken away if they want weakened encryption,
such as key stroke loggers. Whats the point of
key stroke loggers if you dont need the
password?
This was a real question from a job interview! Q: What area of programming do you consider yourself not to be good in?
When we turn a human into an object, we lay
the foundations for inhumane treatment of the
person in question.
The ability to think of another human in an
objectified manner, as in when we treat the
local fast-food server as if he or she was
merely an interchangeable part with no important
human characteristics, we then begin to think
of them in a way which (taken to the extreme)
allows one to devalue their lives completely.
If we make an effort to treat each human as having
intrinsic value, every life as having some worth,
then we begin to eliminate the thinking that
breeds suicide bombers. For if every man's life
has worth, then to take another life is reducing
the worth of the world.
Objectification is very common in our world today.
The terrorist trainers use it (and its cousin,
demonization) to train suicide bombers. We use
it in our industrialized society. When we
recognize the underlying commonality here -
treating another person only in terms of
inhuman characteristics such as whether they
can serve you something, or whether they can
deliver a service for a buck, etc. - then
we begin to see where part of the fix lies.
I'm not utopian enough to think good thoughts
alone are enough. But if the democratic and
ostensibly civilized free world does not set
a precedent based on the value of _any_ human
life, then they haven't attacked the mindset
that allows manipulators to turn the downtrodden
or aggreived into human weapons.
And if we don't address the root cause, we can
expect more of the same ad infinitum.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
Yeah, they'll seriously print a one sentence correction buried in the corner where no one reads it, fully 2 weeks after the original article.
There really ought to be a law where Mr. Zimmerman can get his response printed. Otherwise, the paper could purposely misquote him to further the agenda of outlawing encryption, and print a teensy retraction where the viewing public won't see it.
The end result: people think that the creator of PGP is against encryption now. Makes it much easier to pass laws over the heads of the sheep, doesn't it??
-- Spankmeister General
your lyeing to your self paul..
the media fucked you over.
you specfically went over the article and told them not to change anything, and specfically state your views..
but they still reworded what you said when you told them not to.
that's a dilebrate act of violiting what you told them.
now people all around the nation will be like "the creator of this feels bad".
and it's highly unlikely that the media would do another reprint..
example, you know the palestinan women all dancing around after the airplane crash...
that foottage is from 1991... not from footage from teh crash.
somethign is very fishy going on here..
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
With the current flavor of the political/news month being back doors into crypto and after the emotional toll taken on you personally and the recent press that you have been given, do you see yourself wanting to move into the forefront, and if so, in what aspect, i.e. technological, political, etc.?
-Kenix
"The formula for my happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal." - Nietzsche
Phil,
First, I offer my support for your actions. Such acts as the development of PGP are not understood but many generations later. Surely you will go down in history alongside the greatest heroes of mankind.
Most of us are aware of the ethical issues behind backdoor'd crypto, and why they won't solve the problem (and possibly hurt many legitimate uses of strong crypto). Being a technical audience, I'm sure the Slashdot population would like to know how it could be implemented, and whether such backdoors would weaken the algorithms (from a theoretical standpoint).
Thanks.
Join the NFSNET. Our prime goal is making little numbers out of big ones. http://www.nfsnet.org/
Wow... That is not so much full of holes, as it is lacking in anything holding the holes together.
...directly contributing to the deaths of thousands of innocent people?
So what should we do when the government passes a law banning the use of full cryptography/PGP *inside* the US?
I had thought is was well estabilished that these terrorists do not use cryptography. They dont want to be caught sending random data to each other. Instead they use steganography or some such where
the messages in plain text are just hidden in the "noise" of the internet traffic. So the washington post is being stupid as usual, and doing absolutely no homework, or at least stretching the truth for a 'good story'.
Phil, please sue them.
CHeers!
-> Ron Legere I can never think of anything clever to put here.
I'm a linux sysadmin and I use PGP to encrypt root passwords when I change them on some Army machines that I remotely admin. The weird thing was that the Army personel (at 6 different sites around the US) didn't know how to even USE PGP when I sent them things. I had to hold their hands over the phone and show them how to decrypt the information.
It seems to me that only people who REQUIRE encryption (terrorists, and your basic bad guys) and highly-technical people (anyone reading this e-mail) even bothers to encrypt their e-mail or their data (not counting commercial SSL in web browsers, since that's automatic). Shouldn't our government FORCE all of their communications to be encrypted and give all military personel training in this sort of thing? I'm sure that the bad guys (whomever they are) are all sitting around a table learning how to encrypt data, but in our country it seems that even the people who SHOULD be encrypting their data don't even know how to.
Just an observation.
My proof of ignorance, in the form of two questions, which were sparked by my recolection of the axiom: If you can't explain it to your mom, then you don't understand it. So I have two questions on the same subject, one geared towards a technical answer, the second on how to explain it best in a non-technical fashion.
1) I'm not overly familiar with the current state of crypto software, but I am familiar with Moore's law, so is the proverbial cat really out of the bag? i.e. how easy is it for terrorist (or human rights activists) to do very simple things, such as change a #define in the code of most crypto packages, especially PGP, and recompile for a much stronger crypto package. So that, with the existing code base (until the advent of useful quantum computers) anyone could easily continue to use good crypto, despite Moore's law.
2) I'm assuming that, to some extent at least, the cat is out of the bag. So, what do you see as the best way to support this argument to the powers that be. Perhaps a better way to phrase the question is to ask if you have tips for writing your congressman, specifically on for why going back to legistlated weak encryption only limits US citizens.
Pgp does many things, and there are times when I've wanted to make sure an email is private.
Ahhh, so you have things to hide, Mr. Hart? I've forwarded your post and personal info to the FBI for investigation. I suspect you're a terrorist, involved with the horrible tragedy that occurred.
You're either with the U.S., or with the terrorists. Are you a terrorist?
You also stated that you could only guarantee that version 7.slightly_lower_version_than_above was free of backdoors - in fact, you sign your open letter with version 7.0.3.
1. How do you reconcile these two, somewhat differing, views?
2. Which version(s) do you regard as "safe".
3. Why don't you run the latest version?
All the relevant versions and statements can be found in stories on
This sig left unintentionally blank.
If PGP was used by the Islamic terrorists to plan this attack, Zimmerman should be held as an accessory to the crime. He pushed for years to have strong encryption exports legalized, and now look where it's gotten America.
The selfish, traitorous little bastard should pay alongside the evil men he helped empower.
Axiom: An idea is weak:
;)
1) If it is written poorly, with numerous spelling and grammatical errors.
2) If it uses incorrect terminology.
Theorem: Your idea is weak.
Proof: Left as an exercise for the reader.
I keep hearing that the terrorists "might" have used encryption. Is there any evidence that they actually did?
Krispy Cream is people
Encryption is among the least of a great many modern technologies by which those who are determined and intelligent and lucky can do great evil. At a time when our government admits it doesn't have nearly enough people who can even understand the languages those who've committed the most recent evil speak, concern with encryption seems particularly misplaced.
Greater individual power for evil requires greater individual conscience for good as counterbalance. Nuturing individual consciences on a vast scale requires analysis of what defeats individual conscience. The main threat to individual conscience is totalitarian ideology. The main method of totalitarian ideologies is to convince those who surrender their natural judgment to them that they are the straight and narrow path to some sort of heaven or utopia, and that their formulas must be adopted because the individual's own native sense of rightness and beauty is fundamentally flawed and cannot be trusted, so the first-hand knowledge of, for instance, the goodness of the female form should be renounced as delusional, while the evil of suicide bombing should be accepted as on the side of heaven.
The evil manifests in political and religious ideologies which (1) provide specific pseudo-rational formulas to replace individual thought while (2) providing images of some over-the-horizon heaven or worker's paradise to replace vision and the evidence of the eyes in the world.
In general, the tools of individual empowerment correlate with the development of individual conscience. What was shocking in the WTC case was that totalitarian drones were able to use some of those tools without shaking their totalitarian mindset. Despite that, if we limit the tools, we also limit the further advance and development of individual conscience, whose development in the larger picture is our only hope.
Rather, we might consider directly attacking what enables evil on this scale: the promulagation of simplistic formulas for and unreal images of heaven. Fundamentalist religion is the main reservoire of such conscience-obliterating evil, particularly since Communist ideology has lost most of its force, and the Thousand Year Reich been vanquished. Fundamentalism consists entirely of simplistic formulas meant to supplant the individual's own native sensibility, which it views as being corrupt by nature, coupled with patently absurd images of rewards beyond, which make up for the removal of motivation by the real rewards we naturally seek in this world - which are incompatible with atrocity.
Much of religion is quite compatible with conscience - but the problem is people of conscience generally hold to the formula of never criticizing other religions, even those variations whose leaders openly preach suicide bombing, as does, for instance, the highest-ranking Muslim cleric on the Gaza Strip.
Religion is finally a technology of social control, a way of subverting our natural coding. Our natural coding, as response to the WTC tragedy demonstrates, is strongly altrustic. Religion is a virus evolved and designed to override nature, and the more virulent forms can be identified by their explicit rejection and vilification of nature.
It is precisely to oppose the potential of religious totalitarianism - which is not a distant prospect when Falwell is a close friend of Bush - that encrption, among other technologies of individual empowerment, is most needed. And we must suspect that this, not the occassional convenience of encryption to terrorists who in any case can communicate in dialects we can barely translate, is the main motivation of those who'd remove such a tool.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
In a related story, Gutenberg was "overwhelmed by guilt" when he witnessed recent blatant fabrication of news by manipulative corporate editors. "It caused me to re-evaluate the whole idea....and cry over the heartbreaking tragedy," said the inventor of the surreptitious movable type technology that allowed the evil men to further their aims. "I was sent hate mail
Oh woe is me, I always followed by this AC that vaguely waves at the emporers new clothes that only smart people can see. How can I compete with such smart AC's?
[ for those who didn't click on the link, it's an image at Gamla called leb4.jpg, showing a group of people of middle-easter appearance wearing chicago bears uniforms, lakers hats, etc. ]
.il (Israeli) server and had the name "leb" in the image title, I suppose it's meant to indicated that "middle eastern people actually like the US." But consider the source! Gamla is called "news AND VIEWS" from israel. They have a bit of a vested interest in being pro-america and anti-islam, to say the least.
Why this does not demonstrate "why it's hard to take anti-US sentiment seriously":
1. It is completely out of context. This is simply a jpg image of "Arab-lookin'" people with american clothes. Maybe they were partying in LA?
2. However, given that it appeared on a
So, if you'd like to thoroughly argue anti-americanism into the ground, please proceed to do so, but kindly use reasonable arguments, in context, with citations. Furthermore, realize that this won't stop certain agents throughout the world from FEELING that sentiment, emotionally, so it will be something of a pyrrhic victory.
Why isn't the informed crowd playing up the fact that encrytion is key to computer security? That is, putting it into words that Congressional-types can understand and fear. "Such and such incident where that hacker (technically cracker, but they fear the word hacker.) stole a zillion credit card numbers from SomewhereImportant.com could have been prevented if they ONLY used encryption." "That break in where those hacker defaced SuchAndSuch.gov wouldn't have happened if they ONLY used encryption." ...maybe even something is absurd as "That email virus could have been prevented if they ONLY used encryption."
-Steve
-- Making computers see, hear, and think... http://www.componica.com/
For example, "agents of Satan" is a context that you introduced, not the original poster-- with Satan being a personage associated with only a limited number of religions-- presumably the ones you wish to attack.
Similarly, the statement that "relativism is the only obvious truth simply because there is a range of ideas" is not only incorrect (some ideas have been proven to be correct, others false), it doesn't logically prove that "Absolute morality is a farce". Substitute the words "ideas about morals" and your argument might be closer, but nothing precludes a particular subset of "moral ideas" from being absolutely correct, with the remainder being less so or totally incorrect.
The point about "those who did this" (presumably the WTC terrorists) feeling "righteous" adds your connection -a feeling- to morality. Perhaps I am wrong in this but most people I know would argue that "feelings" are the reason that people do not act in a more moral manner. So again, religions is not the issue here.
You say that "maybe we're all these people- after all, we've all done something immoral weakens your position even more, because for all people to be considered immoral, there has to be an absolute standard against which they are judged.
Now then, I readily agree that most religious groups tend to claim that their own interpretation of this "absolute set" is the only correct interpretation. I also agree that some but not all of the loudest proponents of their own rightness are Christian sects.
However -- and with my I acknowledge that I'm not wording this as well as I would like to -- but the core Christian teachings of the New Testament do not claim that "all morals are absolute", because that was the position held by the Sanhedrin -- the very men who put Christ to death because he opposed their overly narrow interpretation of what the "absolute morals" are. But the sermons and sayings attributed to Jesus do offer plenty of direction as to what is "right" and what is wrong". Whether the words captured in the New Testament are the entire set of Christ's teachings, whether the transcriptions and translations of his apostles's teachings (and interpretations of Christ's teachings) perfectly relate that whole set of teachings is another issue entirely.
So your idea (paraphrased) that "the purpose of religion is to give people something behind which to rally (absolute morality), and an enemy to against which to fight"
strikes me as your belief about religion, not an accurate statement. AFAICT, the core teachings of nearly all major religions that I have studied agree on one principle: that seeking to uplift your fellow creatures without the necessity of reward is the essence of being moral, while seeking to enrich oneself or one's group without regard to this principle is NOT moral.
Which appears to be the original poster's premise, except that he/she said that some people are always moral, some always evil. It is probably more accurate to say that some things which a person can do can be considered "good" in terms of absolute morals, and other things can be considered "evil" and that the best people "do the most good", and the worst people "do the most evil", with an entire spectrum of people between the two.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Seriously, put aside all the terrorist enduced hysterics and think about this.
You'd (Govt' agencies) like people (you and crackers) to be able to read my mail and break into our computer systems.
How does this vulnerability protect me? Being able to read terrorist email (which I doubt these backdoor measures would allow you to do) wouldn't stop anything. They just wouldn't use email.
You'd simply succeed in making me more insecure. Bank accts, password sniffing, identity theft, credit card transactions. The insecurity is bad enough as it is. Do not make it worse!
Resorting to spelling and gramatical nit-picking?
You'll love this. This post has over 553 grammatical errors, and more than 263 spelling errors. Have a ball.
Is there any proof that PGP has ever been used by any terrorist group? Imagine that you are a terrorist, would you use PGP for communication? Personally, I consider this very insecure.
...under the bill, it was going to be illegal to be in posession of any encrypted material for which you were not willing to provide the decryption key.
Where does this fall apart? I encrypt a message using my private key and send it to you. You have no idea what the key is (obviously) and yet have committed a crime.
Easy enough to quickly turn any politician who votes for such a stinker into a criminal.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Frankly, in my not-so-humble opinion, they used you to further a statist agenda. By lying about your commitment to liberty in the face of a terrorist act, they clearly are trying to convince their readers that everyone, even (Phil Zimmerman!) now wants big brother to protect us from the terrorists.
What they did to you was nothing short of sleazy, and to a person who believes in liberty, it rather smacks of treason.
At the very least, they owe you a front-page retraction. At the most, about eight figures in punitive damages. The first amendment does not confer a right to slander.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
How do you feel about NAI not releasing anything but the crypto code, as opposed to the whole shebang like when you were in charge? Do you have anything comforting to say to us who look back through a nostalgic fog at the days when you personally signed every binary copy and assured your users that every relase was backdoor-free, or is it time to revive the age-old myth about the gaping hole that allows the NSA or whoever it is to read everything you try to keep them from gleaning at?
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
If they did it right, we'll never know.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
i laugh at anybody who gets all their news from a 'mainstream' news network. i've known since i was about 12 that the news folks dont give a crap, and they distort what you say (a friend of mine witnessed a car accident, and was grossly misquoted in a local paper article )....
if they fuck up simple things like interviews, whats the chances they are fucking up the 'real' news...
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
Phil,
I'm concerned that widespread adoption of crypto is being held back by the lack of education on the subject.
I've had in mind for some time the idea of developing secure IRC-like chat software. It would mostly take advantage of the authentication and non-repudiation properties of public key cryptosystems, with privacy coming right behind. Most likely such a system would fail, since ordinary people don't take into account even the most basic principles of key management. How can you trust someone based solely on crypto authenticaton, while they stick their (already weak) password in a Post-it note on their monitor?
Is a crypto-aware society utopic? One whose people would protect their secret keys with their life? Technology enables us to do great things, but social aspects can hold it back.
Join the NFSNET. Our prime goal is making little numbers out of big ones. http://www.nfsnet.org/
"The end result: people think that the creator of PGP is against encryption now."
Well, that's not the gist of the article, so why would people think that?
Seems to me that that making wise-sounding declarations based on an article you, on further inspection, obviously didn't read is about like... well, it's somewhat like a reporter or editor botching their job, actually.
You may not like the justification, or share the beliefs/ideas which underlie the justification, but your not agreeing with something doesn't mean it's unjustified.
It would have been more correct to say, in my ethical framework, there is no justification for the murder of innocents.
As a journalist, I've seen editors similarly change my copy to create an incorrect inference. When I worked as an editor, I saw fellow editors make similar shoddy errors. It might be laziness. It might be too many distractions. But the common thread is always that someone is doing something without thinking about its implications.
For those of you who work as programmers, think of it as someone butchering your code by adding a "fix" that creates a bug. It springs from the same source: inattention to details.
Considering the political implications here, however, this is almost as egregious as blindly adding a bug to a nuclear power plant's software that brings on a meltdown.
- Chris
my dad is a brick mason. last week i went to work with him since i am having a problem finding a job. on the way home, we were listening to npr and talking about the news. when encryption came up, my dad didn't have any idea what this encryption thing was and the lady from the eff that was interviewed didn't help to explain it since she was spouting off jargon left and right.
i used the analagy of a house, since that is what he deals with every day. everyone has locks on their doors. i told him to imagine a house where the only way you could break in was by trying different keys on the lock until one worked. the rest of the building was solid and unbreakable. i told him to suppose that if you were just trying random keys one after another on this house, it would take 10,000 years. (worse than some weak crypto, but 10k was big enough).
i told him to suppose that the government was asking for a copy of your key and a copy of everyone else's key. the government promised they would guard the keys and only use them lawfully. we all know that at a convenient time, the lines of "lawful" would be blurred. and we also know that the place where these keys are kept would be a prime target for terrorist groups and organized crime.
he said, "well, who would fall for that? i wouldn't give them my key?"
I'd really like to hear the answer to this.
Engineers, wake up. You are responsible for your inventions, and you have to live with the moral consequences of those inventions. This is exactly what Bill Joy was trying to tell us. Robert Oppenheimer employed 5,000 people to build his bomb, and after it was employed against Japanese civilians he declared to Harry Truman, "Mr. President, I have blood on my hands." To the engineers building the bomb, it was a neat hack. They did not question the moral implications of the device until it was proven. If you build something that you expect to change the world, don't snivel about your "overwhelming feelings of guilt". Either accept the moral implications of your invention or don't build it.
Do we need to come up with new analogies to explain the civil and privacy rights justification for encryption to politicians and the lay public?
In the past we've used envelopes and locks, but I think these fall short because the reason for encryption is to create a time delay to access sufficient to dissuade the smart and lazy opponent AND allow detection of the stupid but industrious ones.
Something that enhances on person life will not necessarily enhance other person life and vice versa.
A blood transfusion could save the life of a person, but if that person thinks that this would "polute" his soul (or whatever) and would live the rest of his life restless because he does not have a soul anymore, would this be good or evil??
I would hate to live in the country without any acces to phones and modern life, and yet there a plenty of people, that I know, who think that this would be a paradise.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
I've had that problem before. I find that if I log in (using the link at the top of the page)before hitting 'reply to this' it works just fine.
-n
In the wake of 9-11-2001, how, specifically, would you make the case that strong, unregulated encryption is a net gain for society? For example, is it possible to balance deaths caused by PGP-using terrorists, against, for example, millions of investors performing financial transactions without fear of governmental snooping? My sense is that lots of Americans favor privacy as an ideal, but see it as just that- an ideal that can and should be given up if it hinders addressing the new reality of terrorist threats. I'm not saying I buy this argument, but how do we make the case in concrete terms (e.g. lived saved, cost to consumers and taxpayers) to our legislators, employers, and ultimately ourselves that strong encryption is a net societal good? What we you say to people that ask whether more deaths are worth it?
#!
You may need another draft. First, even if your proof shows that moral relativism is a weak idea, your final clause is the first place where you even mention 'wrong,' and you seem to be adding another postulate that a weak idea is by definition wrong.
Second, your two 'givens' (Good is the set of all actions that enhance other peoples lives and evil is the set of all actions that detracts or degrades other peoples lives) presuppose your conclusion. Many, perhaps most, actions that enhance a person's life will also detract from or degrade the lives of one or more people (perhaps even that same person). If you say that an action is good if the plusses outweigh the minuses, then I would ask you what scale you are measuring against, and also say that you are begging the question. Saying that there is some absolute life enhancement quotient assumes that good and evil are absolute. It's easy to prove something if your assumptions are a restatement of your conclusion.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
I don't think it's Phil Zimmerman's personal responsibility to address a very large problem that's not easily solved. Phil has already done more than most individuals ever do to promote freedom and liberty on a global scale. So rather ask the question "What, if anything, can be done to bridge this gap?"
Yeah - I thought as much... That article just seemed to scripted - like someone wrote
it for the "Made for TV Movie" It's like dialog that sounds good in a drama, but you realize that nobody talks that way in real life. It's to put yer finger on though until the Monday Morning Quarterbacking.
The Digital Sorceress
I'm not a Bible thumper by anyone's account -- (I'm more closely a follower of Zen BTW)-- but isn't there some verse or quote that says something like "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God"?
So perhaps a more useful definition would be that those who we would probably agree as being "good" consistently make a high percentage of their choices in accordance with moral principles, while those whom we would define as "evil" or "bad" consisently make the opposite choices a high percentage of the time.
Kinda like a spiritual baseball game -- the good teams and players make good choices for succeeding within the rules of the game (thus getting more hits, playing better defense, getting better pitching, suffering lower injuries,etc.) while lousy teams and players fail to succeed because they do not make the right choices (swinging at bad pitches, making errant throws, getting stupid injuries, etc.) and are thereby considered "bad".
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
I wonder why the Washington Post felt this point was worth tarnishing their image over? It appearantly wasn't a simple mistake. That's not the kind of error that can be made with a typo. Were they bought out in the last decade or so?
I know the local San Francisco papers have been bought out. The quality of new has gone a long way downhill, and it's become much more biased, and less locally relevant, in nearly all of the local papers. This puts a few people in the position to shape the news for much of the nation.
OTOH, it was pretty bad before. If one was at the site of a news event, and checked it against the coverage, the match was usually quite bad. So I guess that the real difference is that there is less that is checkable.
What do you call a story that doesn't touch checkable reality very often, and when it does touch, the check fails? I prefer to call it fiction rather than calling it news, but some might call it propaganda.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
As far as firearms deaths, there is no 'large number of accidental deaths' that occur each year. The accidental firearms death rate in the USA decreases every year, between 1960 and 1990 the accidental death rate from firearms fell almost 150%. In 1998, we had 866 'accidental' firearms deaths, this number is considered to be artificially inflated by mis-classified suicides.
Also, 'if all legal owners of guns are registered', then within a decade or so, those same registration lists will be used to implement bans and confiscation.
Sounds like unrealistic paranoia?
Consider this: Every single US city or state that has firearms registration laws has, within two decades, used those same laws to implement a 'freeze' on ownership, bans on types of weapons, or outright confiscation. Every single time.
Do we expect anything different from crypto registration?
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Not only did Catholics support the Crusades, they enthusiastically supported them. That outbreak of mental illness lasted from 1095 A.D. to 1291; it was not an isolated circumstance. During that time Europeans traveled to Arab lands to kill them. At that time almost all Christians were Catholic.
Many people don't understand the significance of the Crusades, which happened a long time ago. The significance is that the moral teaching of the Christians did not prevent them from designing and participating in a killing rampage.
The Crusades were not the only Christian killing rampage. The Spanish Inquisition was another outbreak of craziness.
The moral teachings of the Christians have not changed significantly since the Crusades. Arabs ask themselves, "What would prevent Christians from being part of another killing rampage?" That's why the crusades have significance in modern thinking. It is easy to understand that when President Bush talked about a crusade in a speech to the entire nation of the U.S., while at the same time declaring "war", Arabs became anxious.
It is remarkable how quickly the discussion of terrorism became off-topic. People are blaming PGP!!! Do you have a right to speak to your wife in private, with no interference or listening from the government? If you do have this right, then you have a right to use PGP. Your wife may be in another country, and PGP is a way of being sure you speak only to her. If you don't have this right, then the government can legally force its way into anything you say to your wife.
The primary reason for the violence seems to be corruption in secret agencies of the U.S. government like the CIA. For example, the CIA trained Osama bin Laden. If there is more trouble, the CIA receives more funding. So the CIA, at least unconsciously, wants more trouble.
Israel receives an astounding $905 per year from the U.S. government for every man, woman and child who lives there. A large part of that money is spent on weapons bought from the United States. Senators in the U.S. who represent the states with weapons manufacturers have lobbied to continue giving money to Israel. The U.S. weapons manufacturers also sell weapons to the Arabs.
I've tried to pull together information about these issues: What should be the Response to Violence? .
The U.S. has bombed 14 countries in the last 30 years, killing about 3,000,000 people. Yet Phil Zimmermann gets hassled for causing problems!!! Duh!
Bush's education improvements were
As any computer security expert knows, security is always balanced by convenience. A perfectly secure computer is inconvenient to the point of unusability. This truth applies to most things in life. The more secure the airport, the less convenient it is to travel.
What are your opinions on balancing the ultra-high security available with PGP, with the convenience of using it? Should secret keys be kept on a floppy (or USB memory stick), or is the home directory "safe" enough? How strict should we be in assigning trust to others? I'm interested in your opinions for both users at home and at work.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
[That would be the "Phil's Pretty Good Software" hat.]
Questions:
Do you see any reasonable chances for success for a truly free and open system of certification authorities that would enable large numbers of people to exchange ideas and money in a way they would trust and yet simultaneously permit them privacy and anonymity?
What is your opinion of Hailstorm?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Dipshit writes: PGP and other tools of strong encryption should be banned. Honestly, does anyone but terrorists and child pornographers have a valid need for this? I know I have nothing to hide so what do I care if my email gets keyword scanned. If it helps make America (the best country in the world) a safer place, that's fine with me!!
yeah, and the Jews shouldn't have worried about hiding thier identities in pre-holocaust germany either, right? An extreme example, perhaps. But none-the-less a hole in your broad assumption
Part of freedom involves testing your rights to freedom against the rights of others. I have the freedom to kill other people, but society has the freedom to condemn me because of this. Your right to perform something is tempered by the rights of others.
How do you justify this in the light of cryptography? Clearly the freedom of a few, in using one of your programs, may have endangered the rights of thousands of others. At what point should the balance tilt the other way?
that placing backdoors in encryption will in any way help
us prevent terrorism in the future?
If so, how?
If not, could you say that it is similar argument to that the NRA has for guns? "If you outlaw guns, then only the outlaws will have guns."
Wherever you go, there I am...
Mr. Zimmerman, there has been a lot of debate about restricting PGP, but do you believe that it is even possible anymore? I mean, the code is already widely circulated on the Internet, in both binarie files and source code, so couldn't people who have been using it simply continue to use the same versions or find it online somewhere? Plus, if data is perfectly encrypted, would the government even be able to distinguish it from random data? These possibilities make me question who new laws against encryption will actually stop, as they would be useless if law abiding citizens followed new laws but terrorists had the means to disobey them.
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
Isn't this the same type of worry that people have with guns ( as well as plenty of other things ); "guns don't kill people, people kill people". should the people who make box cutters feel bad because their product was used in a terrorist attack? The focus needs to be kept on the Terrorists and their motives and not what tools they used to carry out their plans.
You lose.
I'm sure that Alexander Grahm Bell isn't sorry he created the telephone just because some people use it to set-up bank jobs and murders!
And don't forget that in a pinch, a good phone makes a wonderful blunt object.
First off, hats off to a career that has been inspiring to us all. I know that I, for one, cried for joy on the day that cryptographic export was opened up.
Now, the question:
It is hard for the public to hear the message "crypto backdoors are bad" without associating it with an anarchist anti-gov't message.
First off, do you believe it is possible for the gov't to implement a crypto backdoor without "Bad Guys" getting into the backdoor and thereby compromising security?
Secondly, do you have any positive examples or anecdotes of why strong crypto is good for gov't, or at least not detrimental?
Thanks, and once again congrats.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Do you also support the eradication of the human race know that you know what humans are capable of? Start with yourself to show your real dedication.
War isn't just. There's no way to completely prevent innocents from getting involved or hurt, and that is a grave injustice.
Injust, however, is not the same as injustifiable.
Justifiability is at best a matter of law, but I don't know what sort of international law would apply to any actions taken here. Regardless of that, we also have to face the courts of domestic and international public opinion. Domestic public opinion would probably be considerably more easy with us than international; my personal feeling is that the right is somewhere in between the two.
Do the terrorists consider their actions just? Hopefully not because the majority of the dead probably have very little participation in the terrorists' complaints. Justifiable? Possibly, if they thought they would help their people's plight. Some people I've spoken to seem to agree that this was justifiable, and I have to say that makes me very angry.
Consider the law on justifiable homicide. I think in most places it requires that there be an immediate threat to the person (in some places to his property) and that the level of force used be reasonable - commensurate with the level of threat. Okay, maybe that doesn't apply to well. If bin Laden or anyone else has quarrels with the US, they should take them up throught other channels. Attacks on innocents to call attention to your wrongs are never going to be justifiable! Attacks on terrorists, and I think attacks on nations that allow terrorists free rein are justified if they help prevent more horrible crimes like this.
How prosecuting an air war against Afghanistan will help, that I don't see, and how to keep a land war from turning into another Vietnam, I also don't see. I hope we've learned from the lessons of our past, but I could see the worst coming - our helping one of the rebel groups fight the Taliban and getting a lot of soldiers and innocents killed and paving the way for the next fascist regime to take over. Is there any way to tell, except to wait and see what our leaders do?
We can talk all we like about how useful encryption is as a tool for terrorism.
The reality dose not seem to match this fact.
Techno terrorism is more likely to come in the form of cracking leading to website defacement. Such terrorism has been done under the lable "Hactivism"... Thow I'd much prefer Hactivism to a bombing anyday.
Or in the form of blackmail.. Reading other peoples e-mail is amazingly simple. From this you can derive all kind of things. Personal habbits, who's replaced a crazed cyber stalking ex, or any blackmail useful information.
The reality is terrorists only use the Internet for recruting. They don't do any real terrorist work on-line.
PGP is useless for modern day terrorism...
I don't actually exist.
the US Postal Service to help coordinate their efforts? Would the government then be to blame, would it be possible to charge them with involontary manslaughter because they provided a service that helped facilitate this attack? People who find logic in this type of reasoning would also find a rock at fault for falling one of their commrades. Good and evil are and will always be taught and percieved differently by people. It is just to bad that there are the types out there that need to point the finger at someone, anyone, just to alliveate there fears. These people are the guilty ones because they are a hinderance to those who trully wish to help.
Nice way of saying they suck by making it sound like you're not saying that when we all know you are. You rock!
First, even if your proof shows that moral relativism is a weak idea, your final clause is the first place where you even mention 'wrong,'
Not sure what you mean here. Care to help out a little more? I do think I need to alter the axiom's second clause to state that it is "wrong" when applied more universaly. Not in an inductive way mind you where it would be false if it didn't actually work on all in the domain. It would be weak if the requisites to show a workable range->domain relationship were a 'stretch'. I simply don't know how to describe that in a way to withstand mathematical rigor. Its a kind of functional requirement calculus that I simply have no idea how to express. In fact it probably doesn't exist since mathematical expression has no room for such manipulation while in any particularly defined algebra or laws.
Second, your two 'givens'...presuppose your conclusion.
Heh, I was addressing this fact before Slashdot ate my post (honest!) The two givens, have a strength and weakness in that they apply an absolute condition to a very complex action. The strength is that something can be considered good, absolutely even if it isn't absolutely good.
Some might argue that very point is its weakness, but I don't. For example you ask what scale I would measure it out with. On the other hand if there was a scale then it wouldn't be absolute anymore would it? In that way it does presuppose the conclusion, or means there is a more simple way to express it.
The weakness is that the absolution is impracticle in a deterministic sence, as the state of too many peoples lives are involved. (You also pointed this out.) If there was one effect to actions it would be possible, but their are many effects to an action.
In that way I suppose you imply a scale act as the judge, where I would start introducing ways to root out the effects by applying razors like "was this result intended?" or "was this reasonably expected?" etc...
In which case its the heart of the person acting that is more in focus rather than the act itself. With a few more razors along the lines of "was this a detriment to anothers life that didn't accept the sacrifice?" and "is the detriment critical or permanent to requiring more that they can apply to overcome it?" we could come up with a more absolute range of effects to judge the action with.
Again, that involves the manipulations that are not "mathematical".
However the idea is workable, and I think the proof stands on merits other than mathematics. Definately if an absolute criteria is reached, then being relativistic would be by definition weak.
In any case it was a fun armchair excersize that is helping me explore the matter in greater depth. I hope it is for you also.
Gun Control: five rounds at fifty yards in under five seconds in an area coverable by a fifty cent piece.
That is gun control and the rest is legislated suicide. Everyone who has voted for or signed gun control laws are guilty of murder by deprivation of self-defence. The most often displayed arguement against self defence of this or similar nature is the declaration that police or other government enforcers should be the only ones to handle such matters. I ask what would have happened if the individuals on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvannia had waited for the authorities??
In the same way any legislative control of encryption is legislated invasion of privacy and the destruction of free speech.
I think this whole thread is basically a disagreement over how "absolute" is being applied. Reality Master seems to be using the term "absolute" to refer to right and wrong within the current set of western morals. From this point of view, slavery is absolutely wrong. There are no exceptions within modern American morality that allow slavery. So, within this realm, the morals are absolute.
The other side of the argument is using the term "absolute" when comparing different sets of cultural morals. It's clear that slavery was not an absolute wrong at previous times in American history. Hence, this moral "law" is not absolute because at times it has been true, and at times it has been false. It is this truism which leads to moral relativism.
So whose right? I guess everyone. It's all a matter of context. I don't think anyone here disagrees that a given system of morality can have "absolute" rights and wrongs within it. I also don't think anyone will disagree that different systems of morality often have different and incompatable "absolute" rights and wrongs. It's this last truth which is all that moral relativism is really about.
I say you should kill yourself, it's the only way to save face and to follow through on your logic.
Just like the fact that one leader (Osama bin Lauden)'s distortions of the Muslim faith (wrapping of terrorism into jihad) do not mean that the teachings of Islam are morally bankrupt.
If anything, the Crusades, etc. more accurately reflect that unfortunately, a large majority of people (Christians included) are more easily influenced by the morals and choices of their leaders when the actions/teachings of that leader are cloaked in the disquise of religious piety.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
There is a lot of talk about technology and religion...
Shouldn't we all be mailing the washington post to request a retraction if we feel this strongly about the issues?
I mailed them and I clicked on the link so they'd know I knew they were publishing inaccurate information...
The fact that you have a fantasy that involves my mom shows that you really need to kill yourself. Even my mom knows better than to fuck a needle dicked whiner like yourself.
...and maybe you can pass a note around home room about it too? Sad that you feel the need to validate yourself this way. You know if you were really getting laid, you wouldn't be bothering with this. Don't worry, someday you'll find a woman that has as poor self esteem as you.
If the government did pass laws forbidding unescrowed strong cryptography, how could they tell the difference between PGP encrypted messages and random text? (Other than the headers of course.) Would they prosecute people for sending random text over e-mail?
I happen to know that several small groups in countries controlled by dictator(s) are using PGP to communicate human rights attrocities to outsiders without the fear of their governments persecuting them for it. PGP is just a tool, as mentioned before, it can be of tremendous use to people who are struggling for freedom as a method to protect themselves.
..When they ban SUV's because they're used by soccer moms (And dads) who can't drive to kill people!
Wait, I don't use that much encryption, a bit of SSH here, a bit there..
Umm. Can we still ban SUV's?
Just look at how those 7x7s plowed into the sides of the trade centers, turning themselves into bombs. I say to have a safe and free nation, we should ban air travel as airplanes are nothing more than tools of terrorists.
I tried to resist the temptation, but it was bothering me too much. All other things aside, stop using the argument that a diversity of ideas, opinions, and values in any way, shape, or form validates moral relativism!
If a standard exists for something, regardless of whether or not you know the standard, your actions are judged by that standard. When I fly formation, if I have 3' to 5' wingtip separation, I am in formation! If I am 1' outside those parameters, I am out of formation and will thus be slammed by my flight lead for being out of position when we debrief the mission! Likewise for a thousand other mission parameters, regardless of whether or not I knew the standard. In fact, between me and my fellow classmates, we could probably come up with just as many concepts of what we think the standards are... that doesn't make it relative. We'll all get slammed just the same in debrief if we are not flying by -THE- standard. Ignorance of a possible standard doesn't make the existence of multiple views inherently "right".
Moral relativism is a poor excuse by people who (usually) have little experience with the real world and want an abstract theory to justify why they should be allowed to do whatever they want. Although I personally don't classify myself as a "pragmatist" or whatnot, the litmus test of a valid philosophy is whether or not it survives in application. Step out of your ivory tower (or out from behind your computer monitor... see the sun for a change) and try to put moral relativism to use in the harshest conditions of the real world, and then see how well it fits reality. Tell me how relative it is when a sniper's bullet hits you in the head, let's see you tell me that truth doesn't hold for you.
Feel free to write. Apparently my slashdot account is a little slow getting started.
-Rob
rfrench99@earthlink.net
no, but then I didn't do anything. I have a hard enough time feeling guilty about fucked up shit I do, let alonme fucked up shit other people do.
and greater surveillance are introduced, when not planning face to face, terrorists will just have to send personal couriers?
If Government could 'crack' everything, terrorists have no choice. Either that - or they get caught.
NSA EXPERT EVEN ADMITTED TERRORISTS COULD GET AROUND IT
Do you agree that Government are using terrorism as excuse to spy on everyone?
After all - for starters, it will save them all that business about getting legal permission first.
They will be able to trawl for information - looking for key words.
I was responsible for several data capture systems linked to network and can tell you - it will be possible for them to analyze your finances.
Heaven help you - if you cannot account for every cent when they get around to scrutinizing your taxes.
This is like having somebody watching everything you do - all your thoughts, hopes and fears will be open to them.
I would not want anyone to have this power over me.
Why should they be allowed to violate everyones basic human right to privacy?
United States Department of Commerce violates First Amendment - WIPO.org.uk
-Are SUV's evil because the government has forced other cars to be small, light and inherently unsafe?
No, SUV's are evil because they waste precious resources, and because their mass and their height fool their drivers into thinking they're not going nearly as fast as they are.
Many, but not all, SUV drivers are evil because they show blatant disregard for other vehicles and the people who drive them.
SUV manufacturers are evil (yes, all of them) because they continue to make ever-larger, ever-more-wasteful models despite knowing all of the above.
The arabs before the crusades invaded Outremer and other middle Eastern kingdoms purely for geographic/space reasons. They were not on any "holy war", but were simply extending their influence and control, much as most European kingdoms were attempting to do throughout the Dark Ages and Medieval times.
The arabic rulers did not persecute Christian and Jewish people, as long as they were peaceful people.
The (Catholic) Christians started the holy war, and commited far more butchering of innocent civilians due to their religious beliefs than the musims ever did throughout the crusades.
Politas
I dunno man, that's not so good. Most key escrow schemes allow for the key to split among several agencies (and if they don't, you can use secret-sharing techniques to do it), which would mean that the information would be worthless unless the terrorists or organized criminals compromised *all* of the key stores. Sounds unlikely.
A better argument is that it just doesn't work; it is easy to use standard encryption on top of the escrow scheme, and the government won't be able to read your communication. The best solution I know of is to make sure that most people don't actually use encryption, which, well.. that's how it is now, isn't it?
gpg: Signature made Mon 24 Sep 2001 09:40:26 AM CDT using DSA key ID B2D7795E
gpg: BAD signature from "Philip R. Zimmermann "
Was that really him?
The Washington post needs to be hit with a wet herring a few times. Then their reporter needs to be sent back to school.
Not ONLY did she misrepresent him but her whoel poitnis rediculous. It only takes the NSA slightly longer to crack a message encoded with PGP then a message econded with ROT13. Thats why its called "Pretty Good Privacy." It will stand up to casual cracking attempts but not serious professionals with serious equiptment.
How can she walk into an inertveiw knowning that LITTLE about her subject matter? Sheesh.
Journalism is dead, so it goes.
This is kindof a flame, but...
The article mentions a rebel fighter in Kosovo who supposedly used PGP encryption. If this is the case, it is likely that the rebel fighter was a KLA terrorist. The KLA is a known terrorist group with direct ties to Osama Bin Laden's network. Their funding doesn't come from Albania (Albania doesn't like the "ethnic Albanian Kosovars" any more than Serbia does), it comes from the Middle East and oil rich former Soviet Republics -- around Afghanistan.
How do we feel about that? There is speculation that the terrorists who attacked us recently "may" have "had access to" PGP or some other form of encryption, but here is a case of a terrorist allegedly sending a thank you letter directly to Phil Zimmerman.
Is it a case of the lesser of two evils because our government didn't like Milosevich? Remember, though, that the Taliban was considered the lesser evil by our goverment at one time. Actually, as recently as this year, George Bush gave millions of dollars to the Taliban for verbally denouncing the opium trade, which he now says is their primary source of income. The KLA is a main European drug distributor, coincidentally.
There is a law. Ever heard of libel? But I think you mean a law to take one's person's property and give it to another, not compensation.
Additives can be put into the fuel to make it put itself out.
every comment i've read here (can't read em all) has been unabashedly one-sided. the defenses here take open sourcing to a whole new level. ***of course tools can be evil*** imagine a tool that destroys the earth with the press of a button.
let's open source unix! no no let's open source anthrax!
now pgp isn't a pure weapon, and the hijackers also used boxcutters(!!!) but i hope you get my point. to anyone that thinks we should release the designs of all tools that could be used for either some REMOTE GOOD (hydrogen bombs could be a new source of energy!) or some EVIL AT HAND (hydrogen bombs could kill billions!), you've been smoking too much gnutella on linux.
In a related study, it was found that firemen wearing helmets were much likely to be hit by falling debris than those not wearing helmets.
By the way, I commend you for quitting NAI when they started closing source and talking about putting back doors in PGP. It can't have been an easy decision. Thanks for standing up to corporate as well as government attacks on freedom for so many years.
The rough sequence of events was:
For the record, it was during the fourth crusade that the Franks and the Venetians invaded Constantinople and sacked it completely, signalling the beginning of the end of the Byzantine Empire.
Some other points:
"This is a Hollywood movie: when it comes to the Laws of Physics, they're lucky if they get Gravity!" --- my wife
This patent misrepresentation of Phil's words is now a completely 'in the clear' example of a major-organ newspaper manipulating the facts as it blows in the winds currently passing through Washington.
I disagree, tools can be made with evil intent built into them. It depends on the purpose of the tool builder. For example, it is hard to imagine a use for the various technologies used in torture chambers that is not evil. Such devices are built expressly for evil purpose, and such can be considered to be evil devices.
A technology can be thought of as being neutral, but, generaly, they are bult for a purpose, and, as such, have an inherent morality to them. Of course it is possible to twist the technology and use it for something it is not meant to be used for (for example a passenger plane), but the technology has a purpose, and that purpose has some form of implied morality to it.
PGP is a technology built to help people protect their communications. It makes no discripminations as to who it protects, and it allows no one to overide the rights of another to protect their communications. This technology is essentialy democratic and fair. However it is moraly ambiguous, since it makes no distinction as to the the morality of the user. It is then a question of whether it is better to be fair or to be moraly correct. And in the case of PGP the decision was that attempting to make the product more morally correct would in fact make it potentially very morally incorrect (i.e. installing a government back door could allow the whole system to be compromised).
So I would argue that technologies can have an inherent morality, but in the case of PGP, I would have to say that it is fairly neutral in its morality, but at the same time democratic and fair. Its up to you if you think this is a good thing or not. I think it is.
"Me and my girl named bimbo . . . limbo . . . spam" - Captain Beefheart.
That a lot of the /.ers dislike guns and yet are using the same arguments that gun nuts use ex. "It's just a tool." to defend crypto.
I was just expressing my sadness that you obviously aren't getting it. Like I said, someday you'll find a girl with as little ego and self-esteem as yourself and you won't feel the need to act out like this, you'll be busy showing her the best 2 minutes of her life.
What I'd like to know from everyone, and this is a question especially for Phil (whom everyone is currently looking to as a leader and source of support) is what are we going to do to.... What exactly are we going to DO (besides chew our cud) about these scary motherf*ckers in the government... about this herd of conservative, corporate-fed cattle that are trampling over our (soon to be dangling by a shoestring) rights.. our civil-liberties, the ones that our 'forefathers' had fought for, and everything else that we cherish will soon have new meanings, and there's not one person who can tell us what they will mean, for us, and for our children... mark my words, this is the beginning, and unless people start to speak up LOUD and CLEAR in a manner where they will be heard by the SHEEP, then we are all doomed to suffer the fate of an ever-persistently evident CO-LIGARCHY (Corporate Oligarchy) state.... Or, are we already past the point of no-return.. where everyone is too scared for fear of being arrested, racked, flayed, or any midieval torture that can be imposed on a citizen fighting for the constitutional right to privacy~~!
hmmm... so "good" people do nothing but help fellow people, and "evil" people do nothing but "prey" upon them (no definition of what you mean by prey)...
apart from being incredibly busy, these people have no grey areas...
for a shade of grey... if "good" people do nothing but help others, could it be possible that they reduce the ability of people to be self sufficient? are those helpers now evil? or still good?
an extreme grey... if the evolution of humanity controls it's survival, and helpers assist weaker elements in surviving... and then on the flipside if those who prey eliminate the weaker elements, and thereby increasing the strength of humanity... who is good and who is evil?
forget good and evil... all humans want the same two things in life...
-
Increase happiness
-
Avoid suffering
sometimes we just can't see how and why... or see the other person's point of view... or we just don't care...Enquiring minds want to know.
-Legion
2nd. If the society determined something to be evil, then this is absolute to that society. In fact, if you pay attention you will see that both sides of this, so called, war are arguing the same thing.
Each side is calling the other evil and that's it. This in fact is a proof that evil/good are relative.
Phil-
Nobody cares about you, PGP, or your feelings in the context of this disaster. How does that make you feel? Will you write a similar whiny response if somebody does an article about that?
Assume for a minute that strong crypto applications, such as PGP, are made illegal.
Would you then consider developing an easy-to-use steganography program?
Would you consider adding steganography capabilities to PGP in addition to cryptography?
(Has any of the suggested anti-crypto legislator mentioned steganography?)
Ubi dubium ibi libertas: Where there is doubt, there is freedom.
While it is indeed true that private individuals can now kill 6,000 people at a stroke, which was the preserve of government beforehand, I someohow have a problem regarding this as progress.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Why is it that the press isn't trying to hang out the Wright brothers to dry? The technology they invented was quite obviously used in this attack. The press and some politicians are making a case for limiting crypto technology out of the possible use of crypto during the preparations for the attacks, why aren't they questioning the availability of pilot training or the public use of physical airborn technology, since there's no question whether or not that was crucial for the attacks.
/Eddie
Fingerprint: 2778 87FA 6708 58C0 8261 DFEB C8FA 4591 6E36 FCCB
Key ID: 6E36FCCB
The only result of criminalisation of crypto techology is that only chriminals will have it'
"email is to postcard as encryption is to effectively indestructable envelope.
Power to the Peaceful
That's basically saying "yeah, we know this law sucks but, uh. too bad. it's not like it applies to us, so what does it matter?"
You'd think that sort of thing would be illegal, wouldn't you?
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
I don't want to get into a huge long reply to this, because I'm at work.
Short reply: it depends heavily on your definitions. If you think shallowly about it, then "good" is what you like and "evil" is what you don't like. Obviously that's relative.
If you think deeply about it, then you can establish what you mean by "evil" in a way that is conducive to discussion, even with with people whose ideas of right and wrong behaviour are different from your own.
M Scott Peck's definition/explanation of evil is one such starting point.
Evil is not the opposite of good anyway. Bad is the opposite of good. Evil is just one extreme form of a psychological defect typified by pride, lying and inability to accept criticism or dissent.
Whether someone's wrong-doing results from being evil, or from some other cause (e.g. ignorance or drunkenness) is another matter.
To suggest that there is no such thing as right or wrong or at the other extreme to insist that one's own cultural standards embody absolute right - both are due to shallow thinking.
Let's just say that rational beings able to agree on a goal in a given situation can agree on right and wrong ways to go about it.
-- What do you need?
-- Gnus. Lots of Gnus.
Hi Futurepower
I have just read "What should be the Response to Violence?", and would like to thank you for writing such an enlightened, informed and informative piece on the WTC tragedy and [some of] the actions leading to this attack. Cudos!
I will email the link to this story to all major news sources, and would urge every other slashdotter to do the same. Only by informing the public can we possibly hope to achieve a change in our forreign politics.
Demand safety now by refusing to suppress and attack other countries!
Best regards
Big Nothing
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
As to the "he doesn't regret PGP, he must be evil!" arguments, I don't think he has any more reason to regret PGP than Boeing has to regret the 767 -- and civil design boeing airframes (like the 767) have been sold for (sometimes very deadly) Military uses.
BTW: Even though the change is apparently small (the addition of a single sentence), This makes it no less agregious. I remember one time whan changing a single word got me into deep trouble. I was transcribing articles for a minority newspaper. One article, in question, was by a pro-comunist writer, who was writing about the events surrounding the US invasion of Grenada. In the article, he was talking about the group that ended up overthroing Maurice Bishow -- which overthrow led directly to the US invasion.
In one paragraph of his article, he described the group as "a study group". Unfortunately, he failed to cross the 't' in study, and when I came to read the article, the only word that I could come up with was "shady". This seemed rather inconsistent with the general tone of the article, and my knowledge of his position (we'd had a few brisk discussions about political issues), but after a second opinion, and unsucessful attempts to reach him, I wrote what I read. When he got a copy of the paper, he would have lynched me if he could have. That one word -- two letters, really, had a big shift on the general feel of the article.
A more extreme case of minor changes making a big difference, was a case where Napoleon was about to release 1000 prisoners of war.. When his aide came to him for instructions, Napoleon, in the middle of a coughing fit, didn't hear the query and muttered to himself: "Ah, Ma Sacre Toux" (my damned cough). His aide heard "Massacrez Tous" (murder them all), and carried out the grizly (if erroneous) order.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Big,
Thanks for the thanks.
Bush's education improvements were
Now see if you really did you wouldn't be wasting your time with these fantasies so obviously you didn't. Like I said, my mom wouldn't fuck such an obviously needle dicked wanker like yourself.
Probably, but the PGP header was left off the article, and the signature is badly formatted, according to PGP 6.5.3, so we can't tell.
After a bit of fiddling, I did get PGP to recognise that there is a signature there, but I get the same result as you - bad signature.
It would have been good if the letter had been published on slashdot in its original form. For all we know Roblimo or somebody else has edited the letter and hoped that no-one would check the signature!
jmp
Philip R. Zimmermann, creator of PGP, was quoted in a recent Washington Post article as saying he has been "overwhelmed with feelings of guilt" about the use of PGP by suspected terrorists.
Zimmermann was not quoted as saying that; he was characterized. The above claim is nearly as scurrilous as the article it takes to task.
But, using crypto is a clear indication that you have something to hide. That, in oppressive regime, could be enough to put yourself in trouble (they don't have to proof anything, suspect is enough).
Steganography(sp?) (toghethere with crypto) may be a better tool in such cases.
Cripto alone is useful in _democratic_ regimes, e.g. to protect your business agains corrupted government 'surveillance' officials that could sell your secrets to competition. Or agains being tagged as 'communist' or 'gay' or 'lover of pink fluffy things' in some government database, and thus being illegally discriminated on your job.
And not only the government: without crypto, anyone with enough means could know everithyng you do on-line.
Ciao
----
FB
How many are dying right now with no food at all, or with deseases the "civilizated world" already forgot? Are they less important than the people in WTC? I'm against terrorism, but all terrorisms. Isn't terrorism to leave people dye in poor countries while we put lots of food in the trash can? Or Bush's policy about polution? Damned, we are all hostages!!
Islamic FundiMENTALists are really just Fundimentalist Christians, who are just Fundimentalist Jews. So can we finally dump this stupid fucking religious shit?
Seriously those bearded fuckers in afganistan don't look any worse than your bearded identity christian wacko in Idaho or Montanna.
The current Slashdot moderation system is made by gay communists!
I think we need to go deeper than PGP - ban all private communication. Pass a law that all human communication must be publicised for scrutiny, and lets outlaw clothing that'll make it hard to conceal weapons. I bet they couldn't have done any of this without electricity either.
..... find the guilty, punish them. Short of confining the whole human race you can't stop bad people doing bad things you just have to send a very clear message that there's a price to pay.
On a little more serious note what is wrong with the human psyche that we need to find scapegoats all the time. We need to take responsibility for our actions. So
Ian
The foolowing was a message for Phil Z. and those effected by the tragedy on 9-11.
Phil,
I am concerned for your state of mind, having seen the write up in the Washington Post. I find that the article places a considerable weight on your shoulders with regard to your development of PGP. What the Washington Post fails to really consider here is that Corporations like Microsoft and Yahoo are just as responsible having provided anonymity to individuals by use of their mail portals. These anonymous mail services did play an active part in the terrorists loose knit organization.
My goal in writting to you today is to help you preserve your state of mind for the accusations being unjustly thrown your way. Our universe is at constant chaos with the battle between good and evil. PGP has preserved liberties for future generations. The value of these liberties have yet to be immediately realized or measured. The intentions of evil may be served off of the same plate of good. The ill intentions of a mad man should not forsake the freedom of those noble in character.
In the case of terrorists, they are twisted by lack of proper education, and being indoctrinated in schools that interpret Islam in such a way that killing people seems like a good idea. They end up in these schools because they get fed there, and wouldn't eat otherwise, most of the time. (this was very well reported in an article by Ian Goldstein in the globe and mail, IIRC.)
That explanation might apply to Palestinian bombmen or Afghan mujahedins, but, if the media are right, Al-Qaeda men are of a different kind. The planes suspects and the fake journalists that bombed Massoud were educated, some with degrees, others students, they didn't live poorly unless as a disguise, they traveled and lived in Occident, they talked several languages yet they spent all that in one act of suicide.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
http://www.cia.gov/csi/monograph/4253605299/csi981 0001.html
Ya, know....I think we're making a big mistake....I think the people who changed Ariana Cha's article are the same people who are actually behind the terrorist attacks although by a somewhat circuitous route.....I think they are making a fortune off the stock market not in ways that we know about but in ways that are totally hidden to us.....to blame our own government although they are partially at fault would be to play into their hands.....to blame the CIA would probably be closer to the mark but would still miss....
So how does this Richard Rhodes know which countries have attempted to explode nuclear devices, and when? Do states usually publicise their failed attempts to produce weapons of mass murder? A successful test is hard to conceal from seismographs nowadays, but what about a failure, especially early in the cold war.
The Manhattan Project and the Nazi atomic research are relatively well-documented, and maybe the British and French efforts. But I doubt there is sufficient unclassified evidence on the Chinese, Indian, Pakistani and Soviet atomic programmes to determine exactly when every one of them attempted to detonate nuclear devices. And can we be sure that Brazil, Israel, Iraq, South Africa and other nuclear wannabes didn't get as far as a test?
Ask me if I've been required to disclose any crypto keys.
It is clear to me that the most effective argument against everything from mandating back-doors to outlawing cryptography is the existance of the one-time pad.
Here we have a form of encryption that is literally unbreakable -- even with the most powerful quantum computers that we can only now imagine -- and yet is so easy to implement that it requires only a flip of a coin or a roll of the dice.
The way a one-time pad works is very easy to explain, and it is very easy for even lay-people to then understand the futility of regulating cryptography.
You might be able to ban all existing encryption software if you go to extremes -- like banning computers perhaps -- but you will never, absolutely never, be able to ban the one-time pad.
Terrorists will always have the one-time pad in their arsenal.
Shouldn't this be our central argument?
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Hmmm. Modded down three days later. Flamebait? And nobody in three days flamed the post. Somebody has a problem and it isn't me....
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
How much of the damage at the WTC and the Pentagon was actually caused by Crypto? How many human live did it take? Oh yes, NONE!
It seems that the whole issue has been blown way of course.
It's not about who can encrypt a message, but wether or not the government can read it with or without your consent.
Big Brother is still watching.
"Dark Wings, Dark Words"
The Dark Ages in Europe are testimony to that. >10,000 years of nearly constant and rigidly imposed religious orthodoxy.
Might want to dust of those history books...
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
  Mr.Zimmerman must be proud for your great contribution to civil rights,not guilty...
Can says this the Rifle society?
It seems that the washington post had ulterior motives in publishing the story. I'm afraid Mr. Zimmerman may not be able to answer my questions and would like /. to ask the paper itself.
1. Why did you take Mr. Zimmerman's remarks out of context?
2. Why do you as a paper feel that backdoors in encryption software are important enough to lie to your readership?
3. Why should I believe anything else I read in the Washington Post?
4. Who owns (or holds controlling interest in) the paper?
5. Why should Mr. Zimmerman not sue for slander? I would have in a heartbeat?