"Big Lies," big nitpick

In the midst of an otherwise laudable chapter on liberals and their underrated toughness on terrorism, Joe Conason whips out an argument that is wrong in about 27 separately enumerable ways:

The recalcitrant Republicans later defeated another potentially important White House initiative. Led by then Senator John Ashcroft and computer industry lobbyists, they rejected proposals to tighten controls on encryption software and to ensure that law enforcement officials could crack the kinds of coded messages found on the laptop owned by Ramzi Yusef—the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Intelligence experts believe that the September 11 plotters probably used encrypted computer links to communicate with their commanders in al-Qaeda.

I don’t have the heart or the energy to rebut this ridiculous, specious, nonsensical, counter-factual, technophobic, jingoist claptrap in full. But here’s the PowerPoint version.

1. Cryptography is math. Much of it is not even very hard math.
2. Americans are not the only people who can do math.

Therefore:

1. Banning the ‘export’ of cryptography is just as impossible as banning the ‘export’ of algebra.
2. Also, it is not possible to install a backdoor for the FBI in every piece of cryptographic software, even if the law says that you have to. Haven’t we heard “if you criminalize guns, only criminals will have guns!” often enough?
3. And trying to ban the export of cryptography would only result in unilateral American crypto disarmament. Prevent scientists from talking about their science, and their progress will slow, and some of them will go to places where they can speak and research freely. Net result: terrorists with better crypto than the FBI. Not “better than the FBI can break”—just plain better.

Ashcroft, to his credit, was on the right side in this fight. Clinton was wrong, and Conason is too. “Big Lies” is a good book, but it would have been better without this argument.

Filed under: politics