PGP invitation

In the wake of the tragedies of September 11, there is a quite natural,
and to some extent justifiable, increase in the sense of wanting to spy
on would-be evil-doers before they strike.

As an avowed and passionate advocate for civil liberties, I am concerned
that this nation may react in ways not called for by the state of
emergency.

One of the things that the gov't would like to do is read all our
e-mail at will. It is easy to understand why: terrorists (/drug
dealers, /child molesters, /whatever sells) might be sending each other
messages that would tip us off as to their plans, and we might head them
off. We are presuming that these would-be bad guys are too stupid to
discuss their plans using code words agreed-upon in advance.

A big thorn in the gov't's side in this crusade is the availability of
strong encryption, in the form of PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), written
several years ago by Phil Zimmermann. His release of PGP so infuriated
the Feds that they tried real hard to prosecute him for exporting
weapons (!).

I happen to think that free citizens should have unrestricted access to
strong encryption, not because we're sending each other seditious
material, but because our right to take steps to assure our privacy is
inalienable, even in times of national emergency.

It is Phil Zimmermann's position, and I agree, that we should all
safeguard this right by using it regularly. If postcards represented
99% of all snail-mail, a sealed envelope might look suspicious.
Therefore let us seal a good percentage of our envelopes to guard
against such perception.

PGP works on many platforms with complete cross-compatibility. It is
available free in both GUI and command prompt forms. I invite anyone on
this list to exchange e-mail with me off-list, making use of PGP
encryption. My public key is:

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: 2.6.2

mQCNAy+kF1wAAAEEAN53ly97IMsxIiJ5l1xK4Ach8KGXA1iHngKjExSdI8a1TpJ/
i0ZpQlDD470wWoBadFVX67yd/APHXu9Ch7zKd4UEO55Re59jI3/yeVMa7Ycx999b
vUx8t4z3Cm8x4a4Ph6WWy3YL2S04UYqbvJOV65HcKSEovcZ64Zov4Dkvv5atAAUR
tDFKb2huIEEuIGRlTGF1YmVuZmVscyA8MTAyMDc0LjIyMTRAY29tcHVzZXJ2ZS5j
b20+iQCVAwUQL6QYQZov4Dkvv5atAQGvswP/Yhpt6jQftBHdslpmRxGGrrAnE4uE
3+wg+VPKezqzKKHWG8keXM2731ZtTLd1jQ7YL/UaXWyACywmYDZ8NNxBNq7US1ig
IAU15HDjKT0H3RDiZ5Jq/bgEbaD9GyIhy4ratf0NGGCUxdA5dgnh9X3VoMoP9ZuT
y6Z9LtxguX16QZI=
=InHD
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

JdL

jdl"at"adaptune.com