[Announce] GnuPG's 10th birthday

[Werner Koch]

On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 14:12, grahamtodd2 at googlemail.com said:

> of our very small community, we are faced with the use of these very
> strong encryption tools by those who would attack the very heart of our
> way of life.  We need to take a step back and consider how GnuPG should
> be used in the future.

I strongly disagree with conclusion and state that we need to continue
to tell people to use of privacy tools - without any backdoors.  It
needs to be as common as locking the door of your card and house.  Yes,
I can imagine a world where this would not be required but our world is
not yet like that.

Speaking of Germany, our home secretary is working on turning Germany
into a surveillance state despite the terrific experience we had 70
years ago.  He tells us that we need to give up some freedom to be safer
against terrorism.  The real terrorism experience we make here are due
to neo-nazis punching people to death or a single nazis who bombed the
October-Feast.  Nothing which can be avoided by surveillance.  Those
they will catch with these measures are the little crooks and small tax
dodgers.  All citizens are put under general suspicion - this is in
total contradiction to our long existing and hard-fought culture of
justice.

Instead of doing something reasonable for saving lives, like a speed
limit on our streets, feeding the poor or caring about those who drown
in the Mediterranean Sea on their getaway from the climatic changes, we
put millions and millions into surveillance.  If you want to fight
terrorism you need to solve the real problems of the people and thus
pulling away the volunteers of terror.  Banning encryption in any way is
not an option.  There is well known saying attributed to Phil Zimmermann:

  When encryption is outlawed, only outlaws have encryption.



Shalom-Salam,

   Werner


-- 
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