At 10:13 7/15/96, David Sternlight wrote: [Oh boy. DS discovered Cypherpunks. Well, I guess it was only a matter of time. You folks thought this list was active? Get ready for the onslaught. Hi, David. :-]
That's certainly one view. Another is that if you watch the precursors of legislation, then actions in the Netherlands, the UK, and in the European Parliament suggest that an independent European escrow initiative might happen within a year. When it does it will be a trivial matter to harmonize it with some US offering. The mills in various countries are grinding too coincidentally for my taste.
Given the glacial pace with which standard integrated crypto has appeared on the Internet, with Navigator only going to offer the final link--encrypted e-mail--later this year, the above timing isn't necessarily one which will be left behind by independent Internet developments. And given the glacial pace of PGP movement toward integrated internet standard products, it hasn't a hope of beating the above timing to the punch.
David is correct. Strong crypto standardization and integration have made little progress in the last two years. This is not about to change. In fact, any standard that is likely to be widely agreed upon will be a weak crypto standard. S/MIME with its 40 bit default key length is a prime example. Meanwhile, the governments in just about any country with an Internet connection, certainly the governments in the US, Australia, and the EC are marching in lock step to implement global GAK. There is not a single significant market in the western world in which GAK is not either being proposed, studied by pro-GAK "working groups", or already implemented. We might see GAK nearly world wide within two years. The question isn't if GAK will happen but only when it will happen. The speed by which GAK will become the law depends on a few factors, many of which are out of our control. Primarily, that means number and severity of Reichstag Fires the GAK proponents can make use of to push their cause. The odds seem slim that we will win the race to the mythical fork in the road at which point crypto regulations will no longer matter, because strong crypto is too widely deployed. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred. Defeat the Demopublican Unity Party. Vote no on Clinton/Dole in November. Vote Harry Browne for President.