Date: Fri, 29 Jul 1994 15:16:47 -0400 (EDT) From: Aron Freed <s009amf@discover.wright.edu>
What is the difference if a big company subjects its employees to a key-escrow system or if the government does it with the people. If you think about it, the government could coerce the company into reading through information being passed back and forth....
[ good replies by Eric Weaver and Blanc Webber, deleted. ] I'd further add that there *are* reasons for a business to use escrow, [and I'm using the term "escrow" correctly here, as opposed to the government's use when referring to master-key systems imposed by a third party rather than information given to a neutral third party by the principals of a contract.] For instance, a business may want to keep records of communications with other businesses, such as purchase orders, electronic payments, etc. but may want to send the communications encrypted. Escrowing keys and encrypted messages is one way to provide for later dispute resolution. Maybe not the best, but it can be useful. (A digital signature by the recipient of a hash of the message is another.) Escrowing passwords can also be a reasonable business practice - you *don't* want to have your business records become unavailable if the system administrator gets hit by a bus, and you'd really rather not have your corporate encrypted mail gateway become unusable if the passphrase is lost. Again, escrow is one possible technique, though escrow on a per-message basis isn't the best for these applications. When I bought my house, the down payment to the sellers went into escrow until we concluded the contract, as insurance for them that I wouldn't back out. Eric Weaver writes:
The government should NOT be viewed similarly to an employer in its relationship with citizens. Employees are free to quit and make their income some other way.
It should, however, be viewed similarly to an _employee_, which it is. On the other hand, when you quit your job, you don't have to leave town; you just find another job if there is one, or maybe start your own business. Even if we viewed governments similarly to employers, this approach would encourage them to keep their employees happy - otherwise, we'd quit working for the Yankees, and either go armadillo or join the North American Self-Defense Cooperative or the Quaker Aikido League. Bill