From Scientific American, March 1994, pages 90 - 101.
This is not the whole article, just the part pertaining to up (reprinted withut permission) please excuse any spelling errors! -------- cut here -------- Parker = Donn B. Parker, SRI International Denning = Dorothy E. Denning, Georgetown University Ware = Willis Ware, Rand Ranum = ?? Farber = David J. Farber, University of Pennsylvania Spafford = Eugene H. Spafford, Purdue University If passwords should traverse the Internet only in encrypted form, what about other sensitive information? Standardization efforts for "privacy-enhanced" e-mail have been under way for more than five years, but widespread adoption lies well in the future. "The interoperability problem is nasty," Ware says, unless everyone has software that can handle encrypted messages, it is of little use to anyone. Encryption could provide not only privacy but authentication as well: messages encoded using so-called public-key ciphers can uniquely identify both recipient and sender. But encryption software in general remains at the center of a storm of political and legal controversy. THe U.S. government bars easy export of powerful encoding software even though the same codes are freely available overseas. Within the U.S., patent rights to public-key encryption are jealously guarded by RSA Data Security, a private firm that licensed the patents from their inventors. Although software enploying public-key algorithms has been widely published, most people outside the U.S. government cannot osse it without risking an infringement suit. To complicate matters even further, the government has proposed a different encryption standard, one whose algorithm is secret and whose keys would be held in encrow by law-enforcement agencies. Although many civil libertarians and computer scientists oppose the measure, some industry figures have come out in favor of it. "You can't have absolute privacy," Parker says. "A democracy just can't operate that way." The question is not whether cyberspace will be subjected to legislation but rather "how and when law and order will be imposed," Parker says. He predicts that the current state of affairs will get much worse before the government steps in "to assure privacy and to protect the rights people do have." Others do not have Parker's confidence in government intervention. Ranum forsees an internet made up mostly of private enclaves behind firewalls that he and his colleagues have built. "There are those who say that fire walls are evil, that they're balkanizing the Internet," he notes, "but brotherly love fall on it's face when millions of dollars are involved." Denning counts herself among the optimists. She lends her support to local security measures, but "I don't lose any sleep over security," she says. Farber, also cautiously optimistic, sees two possible directions for the Internet in the next few years: rapid expansion of existing services, or fundamental reengineering to provide a secure base for the future. He leaves no doubt as to which course he favors. Spafford is likeminded but gloomier. "It's a catch 22," he remarks. "Everyone wants to operate with what exists, but the existing standards are rotten. They're not what want to build on." Even if computer scientists do redesign the Internet, he points out, putting new standards in place may be impossible because of the enormous investment in old hardware and software. So much of the Internet rests on voluntary cooperation, he observes, that making sweeping changes is almost impossible. Then again, Ware counters, perhaps piecemeal evolution may be the only possibility. No single organization understands the idea of a national information infrastructure well enough to be put in charge, he contends: "There's no place to go and say `Here's the money, work out all the problems.' There aren't even three places, and I'm not sure there should be." In the meantime, the network grows, and people and businesses entrust to -------- cut here -------- -nate -- +--------- | Nate Sammons <nates@netcom.com> PGP Key and fingerprint via finger. | Kill The Clipper. Question Authority. Encrypt everything in sight. +---------