At 4:26 PM 8/20/96, Brian Davis wrote:
On Mon, 19 Aug 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:
There's some obvious crypto/GAK/New World Order issues: many countries may not care for a communications system which allows citizen-units or enemy agents to make phone calls from the middle of the Kalahari desert or from within the jungles of Burma.
Or the streets of New York or Washington. Not too long ago, in my former life as a federal prosecutor, I attended a Computer Crimes conference at Quantico (the FBI part, not the Marine part). One of the speakers discussed LEO satellites and satellite cellular phones. The "difficulty" in wiretapping those phones was of grave concern to most of those present....
I am sure this is a very real concern and a very real motivation for some of the work being done on international key escrow (GAK--Global Access to Keys?). The various governments may be trying to get the several LEO satellite projects to incorporate GAK circuitry now, before it's too late. Once the satellites are up, and the handheld units sold in Fry's and CompUSA, it's too late. I'd hate to see the U.S. on the same side of the issue of free and open communications (which means encrypted, if people so choose) as Burma, Libya, Singapore, and France. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."