Emotion vs. Reason in the Clipper "Debate"

[David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Date:    Sun, 20 Feb 94 12:57 PST
From:    lauren () vortex com (Lauren Weinstein; PRIVACY Forum Moderator)
Subject: Emotion vs. Reason in the Clipper "Debate"


Greetings.  The PRIVACY Forum submission box is piled high with Clipper
related messages.  I will not be distributing most of them.  The level of
discourse demonstrated in some of the submissions I've received is
shockingly low--replete with ad hominem attacks and emotionally potent but
logically deprived arguments.  The "debate" over Clipper is threatening to
be pulled straight into the sewer.  This is clearly not an encouraging
development.  The issues of Clipper and related topics are too important to
be dragged down to such a low level.


Other activities regarding this debate are also of concern.  As you may
know, CPSR (Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility) has been
sponsoring an e-mail anti-Clipper petition drive.  EFF (Electronic Frontier
Foundation) is sponsoring a similar e-mail based drive to pressure for U.S.
Congressional hearings regarding Clipper.


While many of the goals of both organizations are often laudable, I am not
convinced that such "petition" techniques are appropriate to the
circumstances at hand.  The ease of sending e-mail means that it would
probably be possible to get 10's of 1000's of quickie "add my name to the
list" messages to such automated petition servers for virtually *any*
topic.  People don't have to understand, think about, or even have really
heard about a subject, they just shoot an empty message off to an address and
add their userid to the list.  Even if we assume that there isn't much
fraud from persons sending in multiple messages under differing names
(certainly possible and simple on many systems) what does such quickie
knee-jerk response mechanisms provide to enhance the debate?


CPSR has been comparing the response to their current drive to the similar
effort conducted against "Lotus Marketplace" sometime back.  One could argue
that the techniques used to convince a private firm not to market a
particular niche information product (and of course, all the related
information is still widely available!) is not necessarily applicable to
arguing against a major cryptographic system with strong government backing
and apparently not inconsiderable bipartisan support (at least outside of the
"technical" community).  CPSR has also recently been "promoting" a "Big
Brother Inside" postscript picture that I feel serves little but to further
trivialize this matter.


Such "power by numbers" petitions remind me of the efforts (sometimes
successful) of various pressure groups to force advertisers to drop support
of television programs with aspects that the particular group finds
distasteful, and of the practice of some radio talk show hosts to encourage
their listeners to flood some entity with calls and/or letters opposing or
supporting particular views.  In almost all of these cases, the key isn't
reasoned debate, it's just names and numbers--to try blind them with shear
volume!


That such techniques are sometimes successful, and that politicians and
organizations will often react to such pressure petition drives, should not
be an endorsement of such techniques being used.  There is more at stake
than simply "winning" a particular argument--the general coarsening of
debate on so many topics into a flurry of opinion polls, petition drives,
emotional television images, and the briefest of soundbites, threatens to
change the nature of democracy in fundamental and negative ways.


Clipper may not be the most important issue facing the world today.  But
there seems to be a trend toward treating this highly technical issue the
same way we tend to treat discussions of gun control, abortion, and criminal
sentencing in the U.S.--that is, with a maximum of emotion and a minimum of
logic.


I don't like Clipper.  I think it's a bad idea.  I have expressed this
sentiment in the past in detail, so I won't go into the details again now.
Almost a year ago in this forum, I suggested that interested persons on both
sides of the issue inform their representatives and the involved parties of
their thoughts on the matter and to express their opinions in PRIVACY Forum
as well.  I had hoped that such communications would be thoughtful and rich
in meaningful arguments that would raise the level of discourse.  I am
discouraged to see the level of discussion now appearing from some messages
in the PRIVACY Forum submission inbox and in some other network lists
and newsgroups.


Please folks.  I know it's easy to get wound up in these matters--all
the more so when it's so simple to just shoot off an e-mail message
in a matter of minutes.  But unless we all try to take the high road in
these discussions, the importance of the issues are going to be drowned
out in the shouting.  Then, ultimately, we *all* lose, on both
sides of the debate.


A sampling of the Clipper messages that I thought were most suitable for
this issue of the digest have been included below, along with other
non-Clipper items.


--Lauren--