At 11:42 AM -0500 11/18/96, John Young wrote:
WaJo reports today on IBM's tiny pocket computer that transmits data through the body -- to another body or to a device such as a telephone. Invented by Tom Zimmerman, formerly of the Media Lab, it can tell "anything you touch who you are." Being shown at Comdex.
Brings new meaning to "Reach out and touch someone." To make some crypto points, I watched the H-P/Intel/Microsoft CFT press conference...the Intel guy, Ron Smith, was someone I worked with several times in the 1980s. One of the very troubling concerns is the blithe acceptance by all commentators I saw on how natural it is that "policy cards" would be based on whatever governments decided was OK. No libertarian or anarchist views were heard. It was just sort of tacitly accepted that if, for example, Saudi Arabia wanted to ensure that women could not use the new system, an appropriate policy card would be denied to women, and that card vendors would set the gender bit appropriately. (This was not an example used, but it of course is a reasonable example of what Muslim countries will do....not to start a flame war, these comments, but just to point out that many or even most uses of "policy cards" will be for uses we in the West consider unacceptable.) I'm also very concerned that ubiquitous use of CFT means a shift to "machine-centric" key models. Instead of being able to have ephemeral public keys for various uses, the model assumes basically a simple machine-to-machine communications model. "Throwaway keys" are not likely. Now the issue is going to be to what extent the CFT technology displaces other models, or even whether non-policy card models are restricted or banned. --Tim May "The government announcement is disastrous," said Jim Bidzos,.."We warned IBM that the National Security Agency would try to twist their technology." [NYT, 1996-10-02] We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."