I was at the "SAFE" forum yesterday. Too many things to report on, so I'll just add comments here and there. And here I'll comment on Ken Bass's excellent comments (there were many excellent points). Bass is a D.C.-area lawyer with the prestigious Venable law firm (the venerable Venable firm?), and a former Reagan Administration official. He pointed out that the driving force for crypto policy is probably the _law enforcement_ camp, not the _intelligence agency_ camp. And that the NSA is regretting the ITAR stuff, as it has sparked an "arms race" to develop stronger crypto. Bass noted that people now equate permission to export with weakness, and that had the U.S. not restricted exports, users probably would've been "fat, dumb, and happy" to keep using breakable crypto. (Many interesting points to make. Bass is no supporter of Clipper and Escrow, and made many points about why the policy won't work. His later dialog with Michael Froomkin and Jerry Berman, about the constitutionality of crypto laws was a highpoint for me.) His comments fit in with the points made by Diffie that the 40 bit restriction is unlikely to satisfy either the user community or the surveillance community. 40 bits is too weak for a targetted attack, but too strong for "vacuum cleaner" intercepts such as NSA SIGINT uses. (Diffie also gave an excellent summary of cryptographic work factors, using 30 bits, 60 bits, 90 bits, and 120 bits as examples. For example, 30 bits needs about a billion operations to brute force, which any modern PC can do in several seconds. 60 bits is a billion times harder, which NSA machines can handle, and 90 bits is beyond current capabilities...) I said I wouldn't do a summary, but I'll make a few comments: -- Both Congresswimmin, Eshoo and Lofgren, seemed genuinely interested in the issues -- Senator Leahy, on t.v. from Vermont, emphasized _privacy_ and made the Cypherpunk/libertarian/ACLU point that he and his neighbors are not criminals and don't think the government has any right to demand that communications, computer files, diaries, and the like be "escrowed." -- Senator Conrad "I ain't no Democrat" Burns was there in person and was entertaining and strongly blasted key escrow and the ITAR restrictions. I found his comments refreshing. -- The whole affair was "preaching to the choir," as many speakers noted. That is, there was little controversy and little disagreement. This was a point made nicely by Phil Zimmermann, who told a humorous story of going to Congressman Dana Rohrabacher's office, seeing the picture of Ollie North on the wall (much laughter), but finding Rohrabacher's staffers aghast at the crypto laws and ITARs. Then, Phil took a hotel shuttle and ended up talking to the driver, who was also aghast. "Where else can you find this kind of consensus?" (A point many of us have made as well, that nearly everyone who has the issues explained to them comes down on the side that the government has no right to tell us we can't use codes and ciphers, that it's all similar to Big Brother demanding video cameras in our homes....) -- Craig Mundie, currently of Microsoft, made excellent points about the costs of a key escrow infrastructure. (By the way, those who read "The Soul of a New Machine" should be interested that Mundie was the leader of the North Carolina research facility of Data General that lost the "shootout at HoJos." If this means nothing to you, read the Kidder book--soon!) -- Michael Froomkin, a law professor (and member of our list of course), pointed out despite the various constitutional issues, the crypto laws are mostly having their desired effect, namely, slowing the deployment of crypto and creating confusion. (That Windows 95 has no crypto modules, and that most browsers and mail programs have nothing built in tells us that the FUD worked.) In summary, for me the SAFE forum was a success. Though it was periods of boring platitudes we all agreed with interspersed with good insights from the speakers and audience. Not much that was new to a Cypherpunk, of course. (In fact, the forum was almost a kind of Cypherpunks physical meeting, in terms of the topics, and in terms of who attended....it was even where we've been having recent physical meetings.) A day well spent. --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."