Boastfully ignorant reporters [Was: Zergo can do secure TTPs

[Alan Burkitt-Gray]

> William H. Geiger III  wrote:
> Well I think it is important to understand that the Internet is
considered
> by many publishing houses to be a threat to their power base of
> controlling information. If the Internet becomes a less friendly place
for
> people to express views that go against the mainstream don't expect the
> traditional press to be too upset over it.

Love that paranoia! 
So why are so many publishing houses getting into Internet publishing
(including our own, very, very small one - see below)? 
And, does anybody really still think the world is a place where a coterie
of publishing houses control information? So what happened to all the
desktop publishing, telephones, fax machines, satellite TV channels, and
international travellers - to say nothing of e-mail and the Internet. The
distribution of information, in traditional formats as well as in
electronic formats, does not need big companies and government licensing. 
The reason there's been so little in the mainstream press about crypto
issues is nothing at all to do with big publishing business conspiracy.
It's more to do with the fact that even to most IT people it's bloody
complicated. You guys live and breathe it, so you understand it. I can get
to grips with many technical issues in IT but PKI is hard to explain to the
average person. And if it's hard to explain to them, it's doubly hard for
them to think they need to worry about it. 
Somehow you've got to find a way of interpreting the issues in a way that
will make ordinary people - citizens, officials, politicians - think
they're worth getting concerned about. 
Alan B-G

-
ALAN BURKITT-GRAY, Editor, Government Computing
The independent magazine about information age public service,
for the people who are going to make it happen
NEXT ISSUE: July/August 1998, mailed out 24 July

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