: re: F.B.I. Director Calls ‘Dark’ Devices a Hindrance to Crime Solving

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 4:36 PM
Subject: re: F.B.I. Director Calls ‘Dark’ Devices a Hindrance to Crime Solving
To: "letters@nytimes.com"

To the Editor:

   Director Comey has a problem. Now that the American public know that "the N.S.A. was not just asking companies to hand over data through secret court orders but also gathering information through the “back door” — breaking into their data centers and stealing encryption keys, or gathering data as it flowed in unencrypted form", we're not in any mood to give him more access to our private communications. And the old argument that "if you haven't done anything wrong you have nothing to hide" shouldn't fool anyone. If the British government had had the powers director Comey is asking for, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Madison and Paine would have been hanged for sedition.  Our Founding Fathers were very careful to circumscribe government's power to search. We would be foolish--indeed we would betray our own revolution--to retreat from the rights we fought for.

Barry Haskell Levine

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/us/politics/fbi-director-in-policy-speech-calls-dark-devices-hindrance-to-crime-solving.html