Local Implications of a National Policy

In the early 1990’s, Glen Roberts and I worked on a
series of articles describing the federal government’s
insistence that they be given the digital encryption
schemes then being developed by various telephone
equipment manufacturers for all equipment under
development. The government insisted that one end of
any conversation they intended to listen in on had a
participant outside the United States. That was their
story then and apparently they’re still sticking to it.

This, coupled with the federal courts deciding that a
“pen recorder” could be installed on a phone line
without a warrant authorized by a judge, smelled
significantly of Big Brotherism six years and more after
that predicted by George Orwell. A pen recorder
originally simply indicated the pulses that the old rotary
dialing used as the standard telephony signaling mechanism
to mechanical switches to connect the dialing party to the
intended destination. Over time, with technological
advances, the form of the equipment changed.

But soon enough even that wasn’t enough. The equipment
of the 90’s could only determine an outgoing destination.
Without a warrant, the government could not determine the
phone number that had placed any calls being received. But
the government agencies that had (and have) an interest in
certain conversations were slowly but surely making
headway towards unsupervised interception of telephone
conversations. And today they apparently have unfettered
access to not only phone conversations, but all electronic
communications.

Ducking "below the radar" didn't, in the end, help binLaden
at all. It did buy him time, though. It took a lot longer to
find him because what became necessary to the scheme
was to find weakness in the social networks surrounding
him. It took an extra 5 to 8 years to dispatch that enemy
of our own creation, an error the US is likely to repeat in
Syria.

As the reward for our loss of much of what we have
historically considered privacy, we can only hope that the
Boston Bombing was the last of such conspiracies. It now
seems as though the only successful conspiracies in the future
will be those that the government itself organizes and
implements.

It seems as though shortly “the underground” that traditionally
pines for freedom will be reverting to mechanical typewriters
and “news” flyers secretively passed around. Even under such
circumstances, we could eventually look to the Ceausescu
paradigms of registering typewriters and typeface produced
here in the United States, once again in the name of freedom.
That term has begun to lose its original meaning.

Ultimately the question could become, which form of law do
you prefer, sectarian totalitarianism or Sharia? Believe it or not,
here in Iron County at least, some portions of sectarian
totalitarianism already exists because elected officials ignore the
laws given them to operate under. And the State of Michigan
chooses to ignore it. Given that, how far behind can crushing all
dissent be? I recently saw it being done by Iron County to a
resident. If anyone is interested, details can be provided in an
open meeting setting.


Bill Vajk