(sorry if this repeats; I posted it yesterday but didn't see it.) Yesterday's terrorist attacks could easily result in the greatest assaults on freedom and privacy in America since McCarthyism. However they also represent an opportunity. My interest in crypto dates to David Chaum's August 1992 _Scientific American_ article, "Achieving Electronic Privacy". In it he offered a choice between two patterns in which to pour the concrete of digital society: base it on identifying everyone, or on anonymous crypto credentials using his blind signature algorithm. The first pattern is more obvious but destroys privacy and freedom; the second can offer the same benefits while enhancing them. Since 1992 we have traveled far down the first path, and yesterday's events may ratchet us many steps further unless we offer a convincing alternative. It is simple: yes, we could make our society much safer from terrorism by giving police Gestapo surveillance authority, but Americans will not tolerate it: you will end up with some compromise that is only half-secure (as well as half-free.) Here are protocols for much better security. They involve private information, but people will accept them because they require the minimum loss of privacy. What should we propose? This group may be the world's best source. Better think fast, though; so we can offer them widely before alternatives are rammed down our throats. A few ideas to get the ball rolling: Active privacy protection: Collect the information a zealous G-man or Gestapo craves - fingerprints, DNA, dossier, phone logs, etc., but encrypt and untraceably divide it through remailers in locations chosen randomly by input from me and those collecting it. As long as I keep regularly anonymously authenticating myself, the pieces can neither be located to destroy or compromise them, or reunited. If my transmissions stop for some period, say because I blew myself up in a suicide attack, the different providers send their pieces to the authorities and the game is up. I can assign a digital Power of Attorney or inheritance for others to maintain my privacy when I can't, but, if a grand jury investigating the plane I hijacked publicly and legally indicts or subpoenas me (or the alias under which I bought my plane ticket), they can broadcast a code that retrieves some or all the data. However their actual locations are unknown: if I set it up that way, after some interval they also send it to my lawyer, a selection of newspapers, etc. Un-auditable taps: Record full taps of all telephone and email conversations. Encrypt with multiple keys and/or divide the bits and store with redundancy and active privacy protection in multiple locations through remailers, as before. The conversation may only continue while the recording is anonymously proven to be occurring. During the statutory storage period, the providers anonymously check one another, and regenerate in a new randomly chosen location if one provider disappears. On the statutory expiration date, all the pieces do. Watchdog timer: Like the processor in a control system, the computers of a jet require regular interaction with their assigned, authenticated, and conscious pilot. Otherwise they announce his incapacity to the world, and hand themselves over to remote control from an authenticated ground controller. (Not necessarily blinded, but included because topical.) Also, I have a few more related older ideas on my website below. Good luck! Howie Goodell -- Howie Goodell hgoodell@cs.uml.edu Pr SW Eng, WearLogic Sc.D. Cand HCI Res Grp CS Dept U Massachussets Lowell http://people.ne.mediaone.net/goodell/howie Dying is soooo 20th-century! http://www.cryonics.org