Encrypt For Freedom

by John deLaubenfels

The U.S. government wants to be able to read your e-mail any time it pleases.  Your e-mail, the documents on your hard drive, anything electronic that you send, receive, or possess. 

It isn't yet the law of the land, but Congress has been flirting for years with outlawing the hiding of any file from government agents, and in the wake of 9-11 they have become emboldened as never before.

Some background: A few years back, a man named Phil Zimmermann wrote a program called Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP for short, and had the nerve to give it away, free.  He even gave away the source code so that anybody with a compiler could confirm its integrity.  The government hates PGP, because even with its mighty supercomputers, it can't crack it (aside: How do we know?  Partly because Phil did his homework, according to all published cryptography experts.  And partly because the government has acted incredibly paranoid about PGP, something they are unlikely to bother to do unless there's a substantive reason).  For three years in the mid-1990's, our Public Servants hung the threat of a felony conviction and a long jail term over Phil's head, because he had supposedly "exported munitions."  Munitions???  How stupid, and how disingenuous, can anybody be?  Oh, sorry, I forgot we were talking about politicians.

For those who are unfamiliar with it, PGP works as follows: You encrypt your letter to another person by using that person's "public key."  The public key scrambles the letter, but a separate "secret key," held only by the recipient, is needed to unscramble it.  In order to enable a private letter to be sent to you, you create your own public/secret key pair, and make your public key known to the world.  Your secret key(s) are held on your computer disk, accessible by typing a password that you alone know.

In typical fashion, the government trots out any and all convenient bogeymen (think "Reefer Madness").  We are told that terrorists like to use encryption.  We are told that child pornographers like to use encryption.  Therefore encryption is Evil.  Therefore, anyone who supports the right to encrypted privacy is either a terrorist/pornographer or a sympathizer of t/p.  Therefore the government must be handed over a copy of the secret key(s) used in every private communication.

Not that terrorists, or child pornographers, would be impeded much by such a law.  It's the innocent who will pay, while the guilty go on doing what they've been doing, using expensive alternatives to PGP.  Or (in the case of terrorists), using code words, agreed upon in advance, across open communication lines.  So much for the effectiveness of the stated goal.  Of course, as usual, the stated goal has little to do with the real intent, which is power and control, pure and simple.

Do you want to write a private love letter to your wife or sweetheart while you're away on a business trip?  The government wants to read it.  Do you want to keep a journal of your thoughts and feelings, that no one else can see?  The government wants to read it.  If the hysteria mongers have their way, failing to turn over your secret keys will get you fined, locked up, or both.

Remember George Orwell's 1984?  In that apocalyptic fantasy, it was illegal to try to avoid the gaze of Big Brother, even in one's own home.  We don't (yet) have TV cameras in our living rooms, but the government is hell-bent on hustling us in that direction.

The pushers of this law don't want you to think about the fact that a central repository for secret keys is the perfect target for an attack by hackers of any sort.  Unlocking a million keys on a million hard drives is much harder than unlocking one repository containing a million keys.

Here's another point that the politicians don't want you to consider: One use of PGP is to sign a letter, either encrypted or not, so that the recipient knows it is from you and has not been tampered with.  Once the government has your secret keys, however, it can forge your signature any time it likes.  Think it would never happen?  I've got a bridge to sell you, in Brooklyn.

I say this to the government: You can have my secret keys.  No, really, you can.  Just as soon as you pry them from my cold, dead fingers.  Till then, to paraphrase that immortal character from the sitcom Alice, you can "Kiss My Bits!"

My PGP public key is:

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Version: 2.6.2

mQCNAy+kF1wAAAEEAN53ly97IMsxIiJ5l1xK4Ach8KGXA1iHngKjExSdI8a1TpJ/

i0ZpQlDD470wWoBadFVX67yd/APHXu9Ch7zKd4UEO55Re59jI3/yeVMa7Ycx999b

vUx8t4z3Cm8x4a4Ph6WWy3YL2S04UYqbvJOV65HcKSEovcZ64Zov4Dkvv5atAAUR

tCdKb2huIEEuIGRlTGF1YmVuZmVscyA8amRsQGFkYXB0dW5lLmNvbT60MUpvaG4g

QS4gZGVMYXViZW5mZWxzIDwxMDIwNzQuMjIxNEBjb21wdXNlcnZlLmNvbT6JAJUD

BRAvpBhBmi/gOS+/lq0BAa+zA/9iGm3qNB+0Ed2yWmZHEYausCcTi4Tf7CD5U8p7

OrMoodYbyR5czbvfVm1Mt3WNDtgv9RpdbIALLCZgNnw03EE2rtRLWKAgBTXkcOMp

PQfdEOJnkmr9uARtoP0bIiHLitq1/Q0YYJTF0Dl2CeH1fdWgyg/1m5PLpn0u3GC5

fXpBkg==

=SfHs

-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Isn't it amazing that something so small can foil the U.S. government's best computers?  Just imagine the frown on Ashcroft the Ugly's face as he contemplates it.  Poor baby!

PC and Mac users: Get PGP free here

Send me e-mail using this key, or if you need help with PGP.  Nothing subversive, please; the point here is not to plot and scheme, but to assert and enforce our natural right to engage in a private conversation.  Anything feisty that I have to say, I plan to say openly and publicly.  I encourage others to do the same.

As war fever rages, as Bush and company whip up fear among the weak-minded and try to steal the few remaining shreds of privacy we still have, I suggest that this is a good time for all lovers of freedom to make PGP a regular part of their e-mail habits.

A final selling point: Twisting the government's tail is FUN!