At 11:06 AM -0500 10/31/00, Trei, Peter wrote:
I don't want to be 'assured that a company is doing what it claims' (with my personal information). Companies change policies at whim. What a firm's founder may fervently believe could become a curio of corporate history after the next board meeting. Look at Amazon's recent policy change, for example. Also, data in the possession of a corporation and me is always less secure than information possessed only by me.
And sensitive data held by "trusted third parties" is always subject to subpoena by authorities, litigants (in some cases), and by national security access. (Not surprisingly, this is precisely why the U.K. was pushing "trusted third parties" so strongly.) In the United States, for example, the holder of information generally has less power to assert Fourth Amendment protections than the actual owner of that information has. (That is, if Alice the Storage Company is holding stuff for Bob, Alice cannot assert Fourth Amendment rights on behalf of Bob. Greg Broiles, IIRC, wrote up some nice stuff on this a few years ago.) A bank may disclose financial records of a customer subject to the banking laws, not subject to the Fourth and other such amendments. Wanna bet that the "trusted third parties" being talked about in Britain, Europe, and other countries will be treated in this light? In France and Iran for sure, and probably in the U.S. Will a company like Intel feel secure knowing that "trusted third parties" have the ability to access its most important secrets? Gimme a fucking break. Any such key sharing, key splitting, key escrow, GAK, trusted third parties, or "legitmate needs of law enforcement" completely guts the underlying crypto. Why bother trying to break a 128-bit key when court orders--often delivered secretly, as with banks, naational security concerns, etc.--will do the trick? GAK beats crack. (Carl Ellison's term for "government access to keys")
Instead of being assured that the company is acting in accordance with their stated policy du jour (or at least, their lawyers' spin on it), I want to know that they CAN'T abuse my personal data, because the don't have any. That is the confidence which ZK's original scheme was intended to produce, and which the introduction of this plan seems to seems to suggest is no longer considered a high priority at ZKS.
If the original Freedom product is: a. as unbreakable/untraceable as was originally planned (verdict is out, IMO) and b. is continued to be supported and distributed then why would the new "trusted third parties" system be needed? Unless mandated by law, why would any company or organization place its secrets in the hands of others? Which may explain the language in the ZKS release about "in accord with relevant legislation." Of course, if local relevant legislation requires third party key escrow, what happens to the legality of the Freedom product? Hmmmhhh.
It may be that the ZK's product 'Freedom' is proving a financial bust (I won't use it until I can buy nyms for cash at CompUSA). I understand the drive to meet payroll and pay off VCs, but I can't help but be saddened.
I'm saddened as well. Many fine folks work for ZKS, including some folks I count as friends. And Austin Hill is a fine person, from what I have seen (one face-to-face meeting a couple of years ago, one long phone conversation, a few e-mails). Freedom was a sort of interesting product, though the "terms and conditions" for cancelling the prepaid nyms were unacceptable to me. I'm not shelling out $50 for a nym only to find it cancelled because I said something banned by Canada's laws about hate speech, as just one example. The requirement to buy with a credit card or other noncash instrument bothered me, as it bothers Peter. Lastly, the Mac issue. It may be that this new product is just being floated as a trial balloon, that Freedom and other "unbreakable" (so to speak) products will be their main focus. History shows that such trial balloons in the direction of key escrow, GAK, and key-splitting will be devastating. Recall how PGP got sidetracked into discussions of its limited key escrow feature set, with many people speaking out against the GAKware aspects; whether this contributed to what happened to the commercial prospects for PGP is unclear. I know that most of the Cypherpunks folks drifted away from Network Associates. If ZKS is seen as "building in Big Brother," then the PR consequences for them will be devastating. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.