Were the enshrined threats – drug dealers, terrorists, child molesters, and foreign enemies – sufficiently and presently imperiling to justify fundamentally compromising all future transmitted privacy? … It seems to me that America’s greatest health risks derive from the drugs that are legal, a position the statistics overwhelmingly support. And then there’s terrorism, to which we lost a total of two Americans in 1992, even with the World Trade Center bombing, only six in 1993. I honestly can’t imagine an organized ring of child molesters, but I suppose one or two might be out there. And the last time we got into a shooting match with another nation, we beat them by a kill ratio of about 2,300 to 1. Even if these are real threats, is enhanced wire-tap the best way to combat them?
Predictor: Barlow, John Perry
Prediction, in context:In an “Electronic Frontier” column he wrote for Communications of the ACM [Association for Computing Machinery] in 1993, John Perry Barlow comments on the possibility of the government enforcing newly developed policies regarding Digital Telephony, which would allow the government to “tap” into communications on the Internet, possibly intercepting private citizens’ conversations: ”While I’m not entirely persuaded that we need to give up our future privacy to protect ourselves from drug dealers, terrorists, child molesters, and un-named military opponents (the Four Horsemen of Fear customarily invoked by our protectors), I can imagine bogeymen whose traffic I’d want visible to authority. Trouble is, the more one learns about Clipper/Skipjack, the less persuaded he is that it would do much to bring many actual Bad Guys under scrutiny… Were the enshrined threats – drug dealers, terrorists, child molesters, and foreign enemies – sufficiently and presently imperiling to justify fundamentally compromising all future transmitted privacy? … It seems to me that America’s greatest health risks derive from the drugs that are legal, a position the statistics overwhelmingly support. And then there’s terrorism, to which we lost a total of two Americans in 1992, even with the World Trade Center bombing, only six in 1993. I honestly can’t imagine an organized ring of child molesters, but I suppose one or two might be out there. And the last time we got into a shooting match with another nation, we beat them by a kill ratio of about 2,300 to 1. Even if these are real threats, is enhanced wire-tap the best way to combat them?”
Biography:John Perry Barlow helped found the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1990 with WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) members Mitch Kapor and John Gilmore in direct response to a threat to free speech. Barlow’s was one of the loudest voices in the battle to keep the Internet unfettered while still encouraging that it become a tool available to everyone. (Advocate/Voice of the People.)
Date of prediction: October 1, 1993
Topic of prediction: Communication
Subtopic: Security/Encryption
Name of publication: Communications of the ACM
Title, headline, chapter name: A Plain Text on Crypto Policy
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
www.eff.org/Publications/John_Barlow_/HTML/plain_text_on_crypto.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney