jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com> wrote:
At 11:57 AM 7/16/96 -0400, Clay Olbon II wrote:
Now my $.02. I am concerned about the lack of a distinction between transient communications and stored data. This is apparent in the GAK proposals, but is also increasingly apparent in mainstream corporate products such as this one and ViaCrypt BE. It is apparent (to me anyway) that corporate access to stored data (data owned by the company, on machines owned by the company) is probably necessary. I do not see this same need for access to transient communications. Am I way off base on this one?
This has been mentioned a number of times by various people. It should be
obvious that it is pointless to escrow the key of a data stream that you are not recording, such as a telephone conversation. Also, if you have no permanent need for that data (also, the telephone conversation) it is unnecessary. As might be expected, however, the proponents of GAK don't distinguish between keys for storage and keys for communication.
Such an oversight is predictable. It's likely that governments will be more interested in keys for communication, because the data is far more easily (and secretly) accessible. Were they to admit that nobody has a need for his own communication data key, they'd lose a substantial fraction of their target data.
My point was not that govts want to escrow communication keys, it was that this is appearing more and more in commercial products marketed to businesses. I run the computer system for a small office and I would rather not see employee email - maybe I am just naive. However, there obviously is a demand for this type of product. It must come from either a lack of understanding of crypto, or a freeh-style authoritarianism on the part of corporate executives. I wouldn't rule either one out. If it is the latter, I'm not sure there is anything we can do. Clay *************************************************************************** Clay Olbon II * Clay.Olbon@dynetics.com Systems Engineer * PGP262 public key on web page Dynetics, Inc. * http://www.msen.com/~olbon/olbon.html ***************************************************************** TANSTAAFL