Monday, August 21, 2017

Psychologists Settle Torture Lawsuit

Two psychologists, James Mitchell and John 'Bruce' Jessen, who were paid $81 million dollars by the CIA to develop methods of "enhanced interrogation," settled a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of three torture victims, one of whom died
https://www.aclu.org/cases/salim-v-mitchell-lawsuit-against-psychologists-behind-cia-torture-program The plaintiffs accused the two psychologists of "torture; cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; nonconsensual human experimentation; and war crimes," according to a report on NPR. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/17/544183178/psychologists-behind-cia-enhanced-interrogation-program-settle-detainees-lawsuit. Today, the American Psychological Association said the settlement does not absolve the two defendants of their responsibility for violating professional ethics. The two psychologists denied culpability and settlement details were confidential.

The Game of Life: Science Spirits and Psychiatrists

Science works, we can see its products all about us. Science predicted a total eclipse of the sun traveling across the United States today, and it happened, exactly as predicted.

Scientific principles when applied to the things of this world operate predictably to produce intended results. Psychiatry, sociology, psychology, and the other social sciences, however, that purport to deal with man do not work. The war on poverty, with billions of dollars and the best minds attempting to make a difference, and poverty is still with us, and according to some, is growing even in this recent time of affluence and prosperity. Mental illness, homelessness, crime has not diminished in spite of the efforts of the best most well-intentioned practitioners. And soldiers, armed with modern technology capable of wiping out the inhabitants of earth, are still afflicted with the neuroses, psychoses, and aberrations that have plagued men since the beginning of the race.

So while science has brought human beings from disease and a struggle for survival to the stars, social sciences are still back in Neanderthal times, struggling to deal with basic tenets of humanity. Psychiatry has rushed to redefine itself as a science, a branch of medicine, taking its place beside surgery as a scientific discipline. But to see clearly the incursions of psychiatry into the halls of science, you must hear what some of its early advocates said.
In 1940, John Rawling Rees, a cofounder of the World Federation of Mental Health said "Since the last world war we have done much to infiltrate the various social organizations throughout the country … we have made a useful attack upon a number of professions. The two easiest of them naturally are the teaching profession and the church."
Another cofounder of the WFMH, G. Brock Chisholm, called for psychiatrists to free "the race from its crippling burden of good and evil." http://www.cchrstl.org/documents/religion.pdf . Religion is burdened with its own troubles and conflicts, but when psychiatry usurped religion, it did away with the idea of man as a spirit. The word psychology, for example, means the "study of the soul or spirit." But psychology redefined mankind as bereft of spirit, a collection of amino acids, flesh, bone and stimulus-response reactions. Men were very much like dogs, the theory goes, and you could punish them to make them obey, stimulus-response style, because there was nobody else home.

So if you apply science to a subject like human beings, and remove the most essential portion of humans – a spiritual nature – science won't work. It is as if you tried to study water by analyzing a dry lake, or studying hydrogen and not oxygen. But science is science, and squishy stuff like spirits gets tossed on the rubbish heap. Spirits do not compute in a science that admits only matter. So psychiatrists have to explain mental illness – not as a degradation of the spirit, but as a chemical imbalance, which they can address with very profitable pharmaceuticals.

In the way of analogy, let's take a video game. The essential elements are the computer and its game program, a screen, keyboard, electricity, etc. Perhaps it’s a multi-player game that connects others over the internet. So plug the computer in, turn it on, click on the game, and what happens? Nothing. It needs a player. The player is outside the game. He or she cannot directly enter the game. The game is made up of electrical circuits, which by analogy are nerves, a program, which by analogy is the brain, and the various computer displays and devices such as a screen, mouse, joystick, keyboard, etc. which by analogy is the human body. But it needs a player. So to play this game, the player selects an avatar, an electrical entity that will represent the player on the screen and which the player can control to participate in the game. The player, let us say, chooses to interface with the game, take up the avatar and enter the game. 

A spirit, by analogy enters the game by inhabiting a body, learning to run it by use of the program/brain and its neurons in order to enter the game called "Life on Earth." A game player may be beset by distractions. Dinner, its history in the game, the degree of competitiveness, time constraints, weaknesses and strengths, and so on. Might a spirit also have a history, strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, time constraints, distractions, etc.? If a scientist were to analyze only the avatar and not the player, the brain and not the spirit, the computer program and not the user of that program, might not the scientist come up with wildly varying results, unpredictable results?

Obviously a program can have errors in it. Computer code is often full of errors, and brains can have errors too. But what about the player, the spirit? Does science address the spirit? No it does not. Science deals with matter energy space and time, and spirit does not inhabit that realm. The player does not inhabit the video game, the spirit does not inhabit the physical universe, it only interfaces with it through an avatar/body to play the game called "Life on Earth."

So what is a spirit? In physics it would be termed a true static. It has no matter, no energy, no space, no time, it has no location, no mass, none of the factors that science deals with so effectively, and yet through the avatar of the human body, it can act in the universe of matter, energy, space and time, it can play the game of life.

So what about the mind? We have them, we're pretty sure of that, but the psychiatrists refuse to believe in a spirit, and they have relegated the mind to the brain. The brain is where memory is kept, where decisions get made, where love blooms, where intention begins, where our awareness is located. That is like saying that a company's telephone system is where the company's intelligence resides. You see? According to the psychiatrists, here's no one home, no one using the telephone system, it's all material stuff, that's all that matters and by god they are going to make it explain what makes men tick.

So try an experiment. Close your eyes and get a picture of a cat. Is it a cat you know? A made up cat? A Cat with green and purple stripes? So who is looking at the cat? Are you using your eyeballs to see the cat? How about we say the mind is like the cloud in computer-speak. It's not part of the body, the computer, or the computer program, but somewhere else. We create memories and pictures and store them in the cloud, then retrieve them when we want or need to look at our album. And we don't use our bodies' eyeballs to view them. The spirit does that. Memories are not like bits of cheese stored in holes in brain molecules, but are like spiritual albums stored in the cloud. And, according to this analogy, if your computer system conks out and is replaced, you as the player are still there, and your albums in the cloud are still there, thus we get an explanation of past-life memories, which psychiatrists say are hallucinations for which prescriptions are needed. Oh, and by analogy, when your body dies, you retreat from the game for a time, get a new computer system, reinstall the programs, and continue the game. Psychiatrists say there is no cloud, there is no spirit, only body and brain which die and rot so you're doomed and depressed without some of their happy pill prescriptions.


Cheer up! If you are a spirit, you are basically good and you will never die. You are immortal and much more powerful than the psychiatrists would have you believe. They say you are deluded, need pharmaceuticals, that life is mud and so are you. You have your troubles, that's for certain. Spirits make mistakes, sometimes the cloud they use is defective and they operate on erroneous data and do harmful things. There are bugs in the computer program and so sometimes when you try to help you hurt someone. Sometimes you are flooded with bad data and shoot someone, especially if your circuits are flooded with anti-depressants, stimulants, opioids and such. But you are basically good, and helping others is basic to your nature. But spirits are immortal and can get worn out from lifetime after lifetime, and they need a refresher or a vacation.

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Sunday, August 20, 2017

NEWS AND ANALYSIS


Oregon Decriminalizes Some Hard Drug Possession
Data: Oregon House Bill 2355 –  https://legiscan.com/OR/text/HB2355/2017 -- that stiffens regulations on traffic stops and racial profiling – also reduces the penalty for first offense possession of small amounts of Schedule 1 drugs such as methadone, oxycodone, heroin, ecstasy, cocaine, and methamphetamine. The bill reduces penalties from a felony to a misdemeanor.  Oregon Gov. Kate Brown's signed the bill on Aug. 15.
Pro: The bill was filed at the request of Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, who said in a release that the bill implements anti-profiling laws and reduces penalties for lower-level drug offenders. Oregon Rep. Mitch Greenlick (D.) – who is also a pharmacist and former Kaiser Foundation vice president of researchhttps://ballotpedia.org/Mitch_Greenlick  said in a Washington Free Beacon article http://freebeacon.com/issues/oregon-reduce-hard-drug-convictions/  "We've got to treat people, not put them in prison It would be like putting them in the state penitentiary for having diabetes. … This is a chronic brain disorder and it needs to be treated this way."." The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also supported the bill and said in a release https://www.aclu-or.org/en/legislation/defelonize-drug-possession-hb-2355 that the war on drugs has failed, and law enforcement money can be better spent elsewhere. It also says that minorities are unfairly targeted, and treatment, education and rehabilitation are the answers.
Con: The majority of Republicans in both House and Senate voted against the bill as well as some Democrats. Democrat Sen. Betsy Johnson said the bill was misguided and called it a "hug-a thug-policy." http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2017/07/oregon_bill_will_reduce_punish.html
Analysis:
1.       Statement: The war on drugs has failed: One could argue that the war wasn't lost, it was subverted by pharmaceutical firms. Bayer invented heroin as a supposedly non-addictive treatment for morphine addiction. Doctors then backed off use of addictive opioids for pain relief except in the most extreme cases. Then Purdue pharmaceuticals in 1996 marketed a timed-release tablet that the company said was a non-addictive opioid called OxyContin https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/06/lawsuit-pharmaceutical-companies-opioids/529020/  which came into use for all sorts of minor pains. Predictably, OxyContin acted like the opioid it was and hooked thousands of people, then spread illegally into the society and ushered in what is now officially called "The Opioid Crisis.". Similarly LSD was synthesized by a chemist at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, was tested by the CIA at American Universities http://healthland.time.com/2012/03/23/the-legacy-of-the-cias-secret-lsd-experiments-on-america/, and spread into society pushed by Professor Timothy Leary and friends. Oregon was a leader in stopping methamphetamine use by passing a law in 2006 requiring a prescription to obtain the pseudoephedrine precursor. http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/07/oregons_meth_law_praised_as_so.html  Meth busts dropped in Oregon and Mississippi which had a similar law. But other states – under heavy lobbying by the pharmaceutical industry – failed to pass similar laws, and meth use rose again, as the precursors and meth itself were smuggled in from other states and Mexico. So why would pharmaceutical firms risk association with illicit drug use, addiction, crime, degradation and death? Because now that "the war on drugs has failed," and our prisons are full, "treatment" is advocated, states like Oregon are legalizing marijuana and reducing penalties for opioid use, and billions of dollars are going to treat opioid addiction. How is opioid addiction treated? With something called Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT). https://www.statnews.com/2017/05/15/medication-assisted-treatment-what-we-know/  MAT takes people addicted to heroin, for example, and switches them to legal pharmaceutical products such as methadone, buprenorphine, https://www.samhsa.gov/medication-assisted-treatment/treatment/buprenorphine  and naltrexone https://www.samhsa.gov/medication-assisted-treatment/treatment/naltrexone. The National Institute for Drug Abuse says addiction is a chronic disease which needs long-term care https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/treatment-approaches-drug-addiction so the recovering addict may need these prescriptions for the rest of his or her life. And big pharma also markets another drug to use in cases of opioid overdose, called Naloxone (Also called Narcan and Evzio). http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/addiction/drug-overdose-naloxone#1 A supply should be carried by thousands of first responders, doctors, and family members of addicts or those on opioid pain relievers. The cost of a dose just jumped from $575 a dose to about $4,500 according to Wired Magazine, and has a shelf life of 18-24 months. https://www.wired.com/2017/02/575-life-saving-drug-jump-4500-blame-perverse-system/  http://www.nchrc.org/programs-and-services/naloxone-101/
2.       Statement: "[Jailing drug addicts] would be like putting them in the state penitentiary for having diabetes." See the above item on "medication assisted treatment," by pharmaceuticals. And the statement is uttered by a pharmacist. Many groups see addiction as a disease, including the American Medical Association and the American Society of Addiction Medicine https://www.centeronaddiction.org/what-addiction/addiction-disease The addict is not responsible for his addiction, says this theory, as it is changes in the brain and DNA which create addiction. It's all body, and body is what doctors treat. Even psychiatrists think addiction, depression, schizophrenia etc. are all diseases, thus the terms "mental health" and "mental illness." even though there are no scientific tests for disorders such as "oppositional defiant disorder" "ADHD" "obsessive compulsive disorder" and so on to the tune of some 300 different so-called diseases catalogued in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by psychiatrists to bill for insurance payments. There are tests for diabetes, but psychiatric "disorders" are simply voted on by psychiatrists from time to time, so that pharmaceutical companies can get busy and invent new pills. And thus we have speed given legally to children for not sitting still, the definition of autism expanded into "autism spectrum disorder" to scoop up millions more children and put them on expensive pharmaceuticals, and mental health given parity with physical health in the Affordable Care Act, to secure the funding for all this pharma. So the war on drugs has not been lost, it has been more clearly defined as a battle between pharmaceutical profits and the peace and security of American neighborhoods and families. And that is a battle we cannot lose.

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Psych News

New Mental Health Czar Criticized Agency She Will Head
On August 3, The U.S. Senate confirmed psychiatrist Elinore F. McCance-Katz as the Department of Health and Human Services
first Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, a post created by the 21st Century Cures Act. McCance-Katz will oversee the Substance Abuse and Mental Health and Services Administration (SAMHSA) where she once worked, and will coordinate substance abuse and mental health programs in more than 100 federal agencies. In an editorial last year, http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/depression/federal-government-ignores-treatment-needs-americans-serious-mental-illness McCance-Katz criticized SAMHSA for, among other things, the "…questioning by some at SAMHSA as to whether mental disorders even exist — for example, is psychosis just a 'different way of thinking for some experiencing stress?'"
"Electroceuticals" Mind Control in Sheep's Clothing
Last year, the Wall Street Journal https://www.wallstreetdaily.com/2016/03/10/electroceuticals-glaxosmithkline-gsk/ heralded the arrival of "electroceuticals" a portmanteau of "electronics" and "pharmaceuticals" coined by big pharma's GlaxoSmithKline. Electroceuticals would implant electronic devices about the size of a grain of rice into the brain to "modulate neural signals" directly. While electronic pacemakers, defibrillators and cochlear implants have proven helpful to patients, billions are now being bet on electronic brain implants as a replacement for the heavy hand of psychopharmaceuticals with their no-better-than-placebo results, skyrocketing cost, unpredictable and often lethal side effects, and competition by generic drug equivalents. But nothing about electroceuticals is new except the name.
Everybody Must Get Stoned
Now that 26 states and the District of Columbia have some form of legalized marijuana, the psychiatric establishment is warning that use of the substance can lead to mood swings, paranoia, psychosis, and addiction
http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/substance-use-disorder/cannabis-induced-psychosis-review To treat these symptoms, antipsychotics such as Olanzapine and Haloperidol are recommended. Olanzapine is also used for schizophrenia, and side effects include: confusion, coma, mental changes, uncontrolled muscle movements, trouble talking, aggression, dizziness, high blood pressure, and seizures." https://www.drugs.com/cdi/olanzapine.html Haloperidol has side effects including hallucinations; mental or mood changes, abnormal thinking, anxiety, depression https://www.drugs.com/cdi/haloperidol.html , involuntary grimacing, sucking, and smacking of lips, etc. https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Treatment/Mental-Health-Medications/Haloperidol-(Haldol) Is marijuana a gateway drug? The first director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse says it is. 

Monday, June 5, 2017

12-Step Program to Wean America from its Prescription Drug Addiction

   1. Rescind the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, or have drug companies pay into a US Treasury Account to remove the FDA from the direct receipt of pharma fees for drug evaluations.

2 2. Make direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription pharmaceuticals illegal.

3 3. Make off-label use of prescription pharmaceuticals illegal, including prescribing drugs to children which are approved only for adults.

4 4. Clearly label any drug whose action is mental as a psychopharmaceutical. Physicians who administer psychopharmaceuticals to patients as "something to relax you, or make you more comfortable," without informing the patient that the drug's action is primarily mental (example Versed administered prior to colonoscopies to induce amnesia) will be charged with a criminal act. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nearly-half-of-antidepressants-not-prescribed-for-depression-study/ psychopharmaceuticals are now prescribed by primary care physicians off label for pain, insomnia, stomach disorders, etc.

5 5. Require the FDA to collect data on the effectiveness of drugs, especially psychopharmaceuticals, and if they are no more effective than placebos, they must be removed from the market.

   6. Reduce the proprietary period of a pharmaceutical from 17 years to 7 years, and make it a crime to pay drug manufacturing companies to not create a generic equivalent of a proprietary drug after the 7-year period has elapsed.

7 7. New drugs similar to ones already established as safe and effective must prove they are safer and more effective than the established one. Manipulating a molecule is not enough.

8 8. Make it a crime for a physician or an FDA employee to receive gifts, stipends, speaker fees, etc., from pharmaceutical companies or regulated medical industries.

9 9. Make the FDA follow its mission, and treat any FDA collusion with regulated industries as a criminal offense.

1 10. Make pseudoephedrine and related drugs – which are used to manufacture methamphetamine – available by prescription only as a schedule III drug. Oregon and Mississippi have already done this with spectacular effects in reducing meth arrests and crimes.

1 11. Require the makers of pharmaceuticals which are showing up in the water supply (examples: birth control hormones, antidepressants, etc) to develop ways to clean them from sewage and water supplies and fund the removal efforts.

   12. Require pharmaceutical companies to educate physicians and patients on how to stop taking a drug, and develop ways to mitigate the withdrawal symptoms of patients who wish to stop taking a drug such as an antidepressant or antipsychotic.

Monday, August 15, 2016

Are You Conservative? Blame your Brain

I heard the rumblings of political psychiatry recently on National Public Radio. Now political psychiatry is nothing new in the world, or even in the United States. The old Soviet Union slapped a "crazy" label on political dissidents and sent them away to psychiatric prisons. And the so-called "Siberia Bill" of 1956 would have established a million-acre psychiatric reservation in Alaska with less restrictive commitment procedures. 

Every dictator or crackpot ruler who wishes to invalidate his opposition will claim said opposition is psychotic. Why would anyone of sound mind seek to undermine such a workers' paradise and such a benevolent and caring Dear Leader?

The NPR  Morning Edition segment titled "Hidden Factors in your Brain Help to Shape Beliefs on Income Inequality" http://www.npr.org/2016/01/05/461997711/hidden-factors-in-your-brain-help-to-shape-beliefs-on-income-inequality  cited some research studies that purport to show opinions are simply a matter of brain function. It is a rather short leap from that statement to "The people who believe X are crazy. The people who believe Y are sane."

So according to this research, opinions are the result of brain function. The study compares "egalitarian thinking" (which is good) with "hierarchical thinking" (which is bad.) Drunks like hierarchical thinking, according to the story, and the drunker they are the more hierarchical they are. The more evolved they are, the more egalitarian (which is good, remember) and thus more sane. So people with hierarchical opinions – Republicans for example – are apelike cretins which is proved by research, remember, and only Democrats are highly evolved and caring.

So the conclusions one is left with, is that people who tolerate income inequality – where productive people can become wealthy providing useful products and services while bums who produce nothing of value stay relatively poor– are insane and have something wrong with their brains.


Now that we have established a "brain based" cause-and-effect relationship for political opinion, we can perhaps begin to "normalize" those hierarchical brains out there for their own good, give them pharmaceuticals and mental health "treatments." NPR is on the bandwagon publicizing this stupid research, and as usual the socialist agenda keeps chipping away at sanity, but that's only a hierarchical opinion barking away at the moon. 

Friday, September 19, 2014

NSA Spying is Fruition of 20-Year Old Clinton Clipper Chip Proposal

Many people appear shocked that government would spy on electronic communications without a warrant. But a May 1994 article from Government Technology magazine explored the Clinton Administration's Clipper Chip surveillance proposal and the elements of that controversy sound very similar to the current Edward Snowden revelations. The government needed access to private communications to stop terrorists and drug dealers, said Clipper Chip proponents. There should be a back door in all encrypted communications, and the government would never allow unbreakable encryption. Here's the story, 20 years later.

Woodstock of Cyberspace
By Wayne Hanson

A British official, opposing a proposal to enact a freedom of information policy, said “It would encourage ill-informed criticism” of the government. A proponent countered that it would “make the criticism much less ill-informed.” — National Public Radio

From the self-proclaimed “Digital Queers” to the U.S. Department of State, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to the New York Times, the anointed gathered in Chicago for The 1994 Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference, described by one participant as "the Woodstock of cyberspace."

There were tie-dyed shirts and funky tennis shoes, three-piece suits, briefcases and backpacks, nose rings and pinky rings. The White House, The FBI, the NSA, the IRS, corporations, lawyers, news media, academics and students from the John Marshall Law School, all with a stake in "Cyberspace Superhighways: Access, Ethics and Control," the title of this year's conference.

During the conference I talked to a janitor from Notre Dame, a physicist from Fermi Labs, A Canadian privacy commissioner, the director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a city employee from Eugene, Ore., a professor from Tulaine University, an executive of IBM, the director of Seattle’s Public Information Network, and many more.

The opening keynote was given by David A. Lytel, information infrastructure specialist for the Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and technology Policy, who had the unenviable task of defending the Clinton Administration’s push to put a back door on all encrypted communications.

Listeners lined up at the CFP’s traditional open mike for a shot at Lytel. Snide, irreverent, irascible and downright nasty, there were impassioned speeches, mean-spirited questions and personal attacks as well as some fine-tuned debate and elegant proposals. It felt like democracy.

Privacy advocates — galvanized by a perceived betrayal of some of their own raised to high station in the Clinton administration — went online and collected 50,000 signatures opposing Clipper. Simon Davies, however, proposed that the "privacy mafia" make a bold move. "Get away from your computer screen," he pontificated (He stood at the lectern dressed as the Pope — nobody said this was a dull conference) "Something as wrong in a free socienty as the Clipper Chip proposal," he said, should result in 5 million signatures rather than 50,000. The problem? Electronic petitions on "the net" are fine, but guess what — to really do the job, you're going to have to beam down out of cyberspace and take on the real world.

As these privacy "away teams" beam down to the real world, they are going to have to meet — some for the first time perhaps — real people. they're going to have to lobby in non-virtual reality in schools, and to what Davies called "mother's clubs."

Davies was introduced as a threat to government, and received applause and cheers. He concluded that privacy could very well die, that we would could become subjects of information slavery, and that unchecked, government, was leading us into a new dark age.

The solution, he proclaimed, was an alliance between privacy advocates and consumer advocates. Privacy is after all, he said, a consumer issue.

Phil Zimmerman concurred in the dark designs of government. Zimmerman — the developer of PGP public-key encryption which could be outlawed if the government gets its way with the Clipper chip — said that the individual once had a chance. Government, he said has changed from a huge slow Brontosaurus “without a fancy nervous system,” into a Tyrannasaurus Rex with computerized reflexes. The mice underfoot don’t have a chance.

Zimmerman said that now is the window of opportunity. Communications in the future will use "encryption we control, or  encryption the government controls."

Zimmerman said it's not hopeless. A recent Time CNN poll revealed that 80 percent of respondents don't want Clipper. Currently, export restrictions and patents are being used by the government, said Zimmerman, to slow the spread of public key encryption like PGP. Give the government its head, he explained, and unbreakable encryption will be outlawed, leaving only the government brand with the government back door.

PGP is now marketed in a legal industrial-strength version by Viacrypt of Phoenix, Ariz
According to presenters at CFP, the need for Clipper is suspect. Most drug or terrorism cases — cited by the government as the basis for Clipper — are broken by informants inside organizations such as the group who bombed the Trade Center in New York. Lytel countered with a list of cases he said were broken by legally obtained wiretaps that would be impossible if criminals used the new unbreakable encryption modes such as PGP.

Nobody likes to see criminals go about their business unhampered. But as in the case of drive-by shooters whose lousy aim kills plenty of innocent bystanders, well-meaning attempts to stop the bad guys can result in plenty of innocently bystanding civil liberties shot full of holes. If Clipper rules, then it may be impossible for citizens to be assured that their communications are secure. It seems that the government should play fair and if they want to tap computer communcations, they should go back to the drawing board and figure out how to break PGP and other public key encryption. That's the American way.

The next step is real-time voice PGP, which Zimmerman is now working on. Will criminals want to use it? probably. Should the government outlaw it? Probably not. The decisions we make now will be with us for a long time. In the information age, where we live, work and play on computer networks, communications will be the core of our society.
The next step, said Zimmerman, is to:

• Pass the Cantwell Bill, which will remove the export restrictions, and allow PGP and other public-key encryption to be exported. This will allow international companies to use it, and will speed its adoption. Foreign governments wouldn’t use American communications equipment if it came with guaranteed access by the U.S. government.

But Zimmerman, himself currently the subject of a grand jury investigation for supposed export violations, has developed something called PGP, for "pretty good protection," a supposedly unbreakable encryptions scheme that is public domain. It went on the Internet, was eagerly grabbed by thousands of Internet users and has become defacto standard, perhaps soon to become an Internet standard.