On Wednesday, November 21, 2001, at 08:51 PM, dmolnar wrote:
Declan's comment on operating a physical remailer for suitably valuable cargo, plus some of Tim's recent comments about integration, made me think of the question in the subject line. So far I see at least three possible answers.
1) Make lots of money.
Always a good reason if you can do it.
2) Spread awareness (that "funny feeling in the stomach" recently discussed) and save our fellow man. Make the world safe for privacy.
Maybe we should all take to wearing a safety pin on our shirts, and when people ask about it say "It's not a safety pin, it's a Crypto Awareness Ribbon", and when "they" say "but there's no ribbon there", say "Yes, there is, it's just that you can't see it...". (For the more literal minded among you, this is a joke).
3) Ensure that cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies have uses besides "Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse," so that they aren't banned.
anything else?
4) Economy of scale. Software designed and written for 100000000 people is usually much cheaper than software designed and written for 10. 5) Cover traffic. If every stinking thing on the wire was encrypted (at least once), then an encrypted transmission garners no additional scrutiny. If only 1 out of 1 million transmissions are encrypted, then The Department Of They has a greater sususpion that you're saying something they want to hear. -- People who are willing to rely on the government to keep them safe are pretty much standing on Darwin's mat, pounding on the door, screaming, "Take me, take me!"--Cael in A.S.R. --