New UK crypto law and an idea on how to defeat it

Johan Wevers johanw@vulcan.xs4all.nl
Thu, 2 Dec 1999 17:56:34 +0100 (MET)


Sean Rima wrote:


> My personal view is that such a bill may not happen. But if it does, it will
> be mainly used for Organised Crime and Pedophile and not against the
> average person on the street.
Hmmm. I tend to disagree. 1. It's easy to make up fake charges. 2. Even it it were true, the distribution of child porn could be defended by arguing that if it keeps child abusers off the street, it's the minor evil. Especially because in the USA computer-generated "childporn", that is produced without any childabuse, is also ruled illegal. 3. It is also very likely that resourcefull attackers of free speech will use that law. The scientology cult that got penet.fi closed comes to mind. They are certainly very interested in _my_ secret key... -- ir. J.C.A. Wevers // Physics and science fiction site: johanw@vulcan.xs4all.nl // http://www.xs4all.nl/~johanw/index.html PGP public keys at http://www.xs4all.nl/~johanw/pgpkeys.html