On Mon, 25 Jul 1994, Phil Karn wrote:
I think we need to distinguish between encrypted *storage* and encrypted *communications*. Voluntary key escrow may make sense for encrypted stored business files, but communications is a different story. Since there should be nobody out there recording packets, there is no need to back up or escrow the keys used to encrypt them.
Good point. The line between storage and transmission gets kind of fuzzy, however, if transmitted messages get stored in encrypted form. I think that if I were designing an encryption system to be used for both in my own business, I would probably consider a compartmented escrow system for both kinds of messages, with a different escrow public key for each department. That is would be a good balance between two evils: unauthorized disclosure of proprietary communications, and loss of encrypted data due to loss of a key or loss of an employee. Naturally, this would not be as convenient for law enforcement agents and spies, but I suppose that my own escrow data base would still be subject to the same subpoena process as the rest of my records, but I would be more likely to know when information was being leaked. ___________________________________________________________ |\ /| | | | | \/ |o| | Michael Paul Johnson Colorado Catacombs BBS 303-772-1062 | | | | / _ | mpj@csn.org aka mpj@netcom.com m.p.johnson@ieee.org | | |||/ /_\ | ftp://ftp.csn.net/mpj/README.MPJ CIS: 71331,2332 | | |||\ ( | ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/mpj/README.MPJ -. --- ----- ....| | ||| \ \_/ |___________________________________________________________|