Distribute a key, go to prison.

17 Dec 2003

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 -=> Quoting In:tcmay@got.net to Harka <=-

 In> "Distribute a key, go to prison."

 In> Simple, by declaring that public keys themselves are crypto
 In> material, as the Brits did in their Trusted Third Parties
 In> draft proposal, and hence declaring that distribution of keys
 In> after the effective date of the legislation constitutes a
 In> violation. Give someone your key, either by placing it on
 In> keyservers or even by mailing it to them, and one has just
 In> "distributed" crypto.

 In> This will make the public key infrastructure essentially
 In> useless, as the public key servers go down, as corporations
 In> yank any directories they may have, and (possibly) as
 In> individuals stop putting PGP or S/MIME fingerprints or
 In> pointers in their messages.

But then the same thing will happen as with "censored" web pages.
Mirrors of key servers will be all over the world and render such
laws kinda useless.

You do have a point, however. I was thinking about a possible
nightmare-scenario similar to that: Remailers (as crypto-providers
and distributors) will be taken down in a syncronized effort in at
least the western world. Non-government-approved crypto outlawed
simultaneously. A few highly publicized cases of "violators" who use
crypto anyway.
Enough to scare the other 95 percent into complying.

Once that happens it will be too late...at least for a few decades.

Therefore crypto needs to be distributed and _used_ on a wide scale.
Maybe spamming the Net (once :)) with PGP will at least make a nice
publicity-stunt. Instead of "Adopt your legislator"-stuff it should
be "Adopt your local computer-fellows" to use PGP, Remailers etc..
Those who have the resources should implement new remailers, key
servers etc..

Cypherpunks don't whine! Cypherpunks have no need to be defensive!
Cypherpunks write code!

Ciao

Harka

... "Use a Cipher - Be Free!"

Distribute a key, go to prison.

harka＠nycmetro.com