Goodbye Civil Liberties...

I found the following two articles from Wired News off of the Slashdot site. I think they are certainly of interest to us, as the men's movement is quite dependent on the internet and secure communications will be very important to us. This Wired article describes how Senator Judd Gregg from NH wants a global ban on encryption systems that don't have a "back door" for the government to use to monitor your communications. In another Wired article, a bill allowing FBI wiretaps of a person's internet communications without a warrant has just been passed by the Senate! What we will inevitably see in the upcoming months are blows to people's civil liberties which are unprecedented in our country's history. Click Read More for some of my thoughts on this.

The fear and insecurity of these terrorist attacks are already being used to shove laws through that will restrict, and in some cases, eliminate, many of the civil liberties we enjoy today. The problem is, many of these laws will do nothing to offer us more protection, or the gain in safety will be far outweighed by the damage done to our sacred rights of free expression, personal autonomy, and privacy.

First of all, let's look at outlawing strong encryption or encryption that doesn't have a back door for law enforcement agencies... How many terrorists and criminals do you think are going to upgrade their secure cryptographic systems to the new monitoring-enabled ones? None. These people are already breaking the law, and prohibiting secure encryption isn't going to stop them one bit.

Second amendment advocates have said, "Outlaw guns, and only outlaws with have guns." Likewise, outlaw strong encryption and only outlaws will have strong encryption. We want and need the good guys to have unbreakable encryption. We need the whistleblowers and social activists to be able to have secure communications. Remember, we're men's rights activists - not exactly on the political mainstream. Who knows if the PC movement could make it a crime some day to talk about men's rights?

In addition, strong cryptography has been around for a long time, and is fairly embedded in our society. Although the average internet user doesn't encrypt their e-mail (although they should), there will be a backlash by industry and crypto-aware individuals who won't like having these rights taken away. Especially when it is unlikely to have any effect on stopping or catching criminals and terrorists (see argument above).

Furthermore, crypto systems with a built-in back door are insecure, period. They offer a single point of failure such that if someone were to crack the backdoor decryption scheme, or the master escrow of secret keys, they'd have access to anyone's messages or communications. Do you think the government can create a cryptosystem so good that a well-funded corporation couldn't crack it? Do you want some rouge company to start selling access to your communications on the black market?

People need to contact their congresspeople NOW. Write them, call them, and don't wait any longer - these bills are already being drafted and jammed through the legislature. Let's try to kill them now instead of having to wait years before they're overturned by the Supreme Court.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote, "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." Let's not forget that.

NOTICE: This story was migrated from the old software that used to run Mensactivism.org. Unfortunately, user comments did not get included in the migration. However, you may view a copy of the original story, with comments, at the following link:

http://news.mensactivism.org/articles/01/09/14/233245.shtml