An interesting research project would be to construct one of these to sit in orbit.
And I would even trust it to be pretty safe from physical tampering. The cost would be so high and the exposure from various space watchers rather certain. Good enough for me. Seems there are two ways so far mentioned to do this "embargo" trick: 1) Have a trusted and secure party hold your key until time. 2) Hide a key inside an expensive computation and then figure out how to get the NSA *really* interested in finding and publishing their crack of your code. If you estimated their abilities correctly your fuse will burn at the right speed, the time delay will be as you intended. (Gosh, is there a thriller novel in here some place?) I think I see a third: 3) Kinda "security through obscurity", but a dollop of "trusted" third party too. a) Encrypt the key and instructions for its distribution with Trent's public key. b) Add a message asking him not to open 'til Christmas. Encrypt again with his public key. c) Send it off on a remailer-goose chase to delay and further confuse the TLAs. Hell, maybe just skip "c". Or... Split the key into a n-of-m set of sharing fragments. Send each off to each of m Trent's. Hope that no more than m-n get lost, hope that the TLAs can't find/turn n of your Trents. -kb, the Kent who isn't as devious as he would like to be--but he is still reading cypherpunks. -- Kent Borg +1 (617) 776-6899 kentborg@world.std.com kentborg@aol.com Proud to claim 28:15 hours of TV viewing so far in 1994!