Reply #177: That's not all he did

[DissedByBush]

In Congress he championed the Internet. As VP he championed key escrow. As VP he tried to pressure companies to support the Clipper Chip. As VP he supported the ludicrous encryption export ban and used it to force the other two. The Justice Department followed this view and tried for three years to prosecute privacy advocate Phil Zimmerman because he had made free, effective encryption available to the masses.

Look them up if you don't know whether those were bad things. Bush would have loved to have inherited an Internet with Gore having succeeded in those initiatives. Spying on citizens would have been that much easier for him.

"So in effect Al Gore was trashed because he worked to empower you to dissent, not to squash it"

The trashing was wholly unjustified, taking one statement out of context. Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn think the statement was justified so that should be good enough for anybody. For reference, they are pretty much the real inventors of the Internet.

But if Gore had his way dissent couldn't occur without the government being able to listen in. Thankfully these days we have open encryption giving us many effective ways to dissent without fear of that. Are you happy or sorry Gore failed?

You must be relatively new to the Internet. Gore was THE government demon on the Internet in the mid 90s, and every geek who loved freedom hated him.