suggestions or help with this one? what do you ppl think? Regards, tattooman http://152.7.11.38/~tattooman ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 15 Feb 1998 11:48:01 -0500 From: XXX To: Ken Williams <jkwilli2@unity.ncsu.edu> Subject: Re: <fyi> World-market Crypto for SSL Hi Ken, Thanks for the note. I've got an idea I wanted to bounce off you, since Tattooman seems a suitably non-corporate persona. I'm one of those who believes that the world will be a better place if all people have ready access to strong crypto, for their own personal musing (for what hope has democracy -- or individualism, or community -- if people can not safely muse on unpopular or illicit options, deciding what is right by carefully considering what is wrong as well as right.) I also believe that strong crypto is all that can allow online international commerce, and commerce and trade is the fundamental alternative to war, armed might, and spook-driven controls on inter-cultural relationships.) The core struggle of our time is likely to be between those who want to rely on from-the-top bureaucratic control, essentially militaristic control of friends and foe, and those who trust instead in evolving common needs and mutually beneficial trade interactions between societies and nations. (The fact that the most valuable resource of any future information age -- intellectual capital, human brainpower -- is much more equitably distributed among nations than other "natural" resources, like coal, or gold, also gives me hope for a future in which all nations can offer intellectual trade-good of value and partake of a health and profitable-to-all world trade.) Here's my thought: in the immediate future, Fortify (or some similar freeware product) will offer anyone in the world a chance to upgrade the tens of millions of export-quality (weak crypto) versions of Netscape in circulation, to make them strong-crypto products with both SSL (and soon S/MIME) available to all. One of the big questions in how this world-wide struggle between statist forces who want to restrict individual (and corporate) access to strong crypto internationally, and those of us who instead want to foster the widespread use of strong crypto, is how to educate and promote the use of strong-crypto versions of Netscape (since that is today the upgradable product available worldwide.) What I would like to see is one or several CGI packages which folks could put on their websites which would quickly alert a user that the browser he is using has only limited and restricted export-quality weak crypto, and that he or she should immediately consider upgrading to strong crypto by obtaining Fortify (or other upgrade packages) from XXX website. C2, which is accessible through the Fortify website: www.fortify.net has something like this for SSL. I'm looking into getting something similar for S/MIME -- assuming McKay or others get the S/MIME-enhanced version of Fortify in circulation within a few weeks. Any ideas about how to get this going? Regards, XXX PS. Your note caught me as I was thinking this through, so you doubtless got a more wordy and political response than you expected. Still, this is an open issue of great importance, IMNSHO, and I'd be grateful for any energy or suggestions you might offer.