There is a First Amendment right to speak in a encrypted way.... The right to speak P.G.P. is like the right to speak Navajo. The Government has no particular right to prevent you from speaking in a technical manner even if it is inconvenient for them to understand.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of the right to communicate privately using encryption, equating it with the right to use a language unrecognized by the government.
Eben Moglen argues that encryption is a crucial form of expression and communication, akin to speaking a language that is not understood by the government. By invoking the First Amendment, he asserts that individuals possess the fundamental right to communicate in ways that may not be easily understood by authorities, highlighting the significance of privacy and technical speech in a democratic society.
In practice
During a conference on digital rights, one might quote Moglen to advocate for stronger encryption laws.
The great moral question of the twenty-first century is this: if all knowledge, all culture, all art, all useful information can be costlessly given to everyone at the same price that it is given to anyone; if everyone can have everything, anywhere, all the time, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone?
The truth is I've been doing Kickstarter before there was Kickstarter; there was no Internet. Social Media was writing letters, making phone calls, beating the bushes.
The perfect example of Darwinism is what technology has done to businesses.
In our age of individualism, we see computers as ways through which we can express our individuality. But the truth is that the computers are really good at spotting the very opposite. The computers can see how similar we are, and they then have the ability to agglomerate us together into groups that have the same behaviours.
I grew up using maps and having a sense of direction, and now I have a phone. I used to try to remember numbers, and now I... can just call them up instantly. And that's great. But what's happening right now is that we're in a phase of human evolution where we're merging with machines.
What we did with this mobile telephone was create a revolution. Before the mobile phone existed we were calling a place, now we are calling a person.
Technology is a tool, and it's a platform. Nobody gets arrested for being a blogger; people get arrested for dissent. Nobody gets arrested for putting information about themselves online; they get arrested for being an activist. I'm a strong believer in the fact that you should not blame the tools; you should blame the circumstances.
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