On Tue, 7 Nov 1995, Bill Stewart wrote:
From John Young's posting CYB_lip of a column from the Washington Post
"At some point in the not-very-distant future," said Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) in an August interview in Wired with computer guru Esther Dyson, "somebody is going to have encryption you can't break.... Governments are not going to be able to stop it."
Newt's an optimist (from the government perspective.) At some point in the not-very-distant future, _everybody_ is going to have encryption the government can't break!
Oviously, Newt missed a briefing somewhere. His comments leave the impression that -- in the recent past and even at present -- we only had encryption which Governments could break. This is nonsense. We've always had encryption which the government couldn't break. We've had it in the past. We have it at present. And we will have it in the future. We've always had "non-breakable" private communication. A simple example. If I was negotiating at a table with my legal team around me, and the opposing team across from me, and I wanted to send a message to my team that is for their eyes only, all I have to do is write something on the writing pad in front of me, and I have a secure communications channel to them. I can even write it in plain text. My team sees it, while the other team doesn't. This _really_ should not surprise anyone ... especially Newt. Alice de 'nonymous ... ...just another one of those... P.S. This post is in the public domain. C. S. U. M. O. C. L. U. N. E.