SSSCA renamed and introduced in Senate!

[Craig S.]

>
>
> Message: 1
> From: Joel Dudley <Joel.Dudley@DevelopOnline.com>
> To: "'plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us'"
>          <plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
> Subject: RE: SSSCA renamed and introduced in Senate!
> Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 08:19:58 -0700
> Reply-To: plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
>
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> Arizona residents are in a unique position in regards to speaking out
> against this bill. Arizona Senator John McCain is on the Commerce, Science,
> and Transportation committee with, you guessed it, Senator Hollings who is
> the chairman of the committee. Please send as many well-written, anti-sssca
> letters as you can to Senator McCain.
>

> - Joel
>

I just finished reading Sen. Hollings diatribe. First off I need to wipe the tears from my eyes. Here are totally ignorant and incompent fools in the Field of Digital Electronics trying to form a law to regulate said products. I don't know about any of you but that scares the hell out of me. The
same kind of fear that I have around the idiot who smokes at the gas station while pumping fuel and gets pissed when you tell him to put it out.

My concerns would be whether or not the encryption algorithms would be open and the standards formed according to professional (real professional not McAffee professional) techniques. Like the basic rule of good encryption is to place the strength of the encryption in the key, not the algorithm.
Most people rely on security the security of the algorithm and that is not good. Now do you think our puddin-head politicians understand this. No, they will let major media outlets design this secret algorithm and let them lock it away and sell rights to this to the highest bidder. In the end this
will make viewing video on Open Source OS'es difficult to impossible. That seems to go against the basic tenets of the philosophy of making media available to everyone. Or maybe the philosophy is that the media will be available only to those who conform to someone elses ideologies and principles.

By the way, the part of Holling's little diatribe that I found especially jocular was when he confused digital decoding with deciphering encrypted media.

you can read Sen. Holling's speech at the following URL:
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/hollings.cbdtpa.release.032102.html

Craig S.