On Feb 23, 1996 00:19:15, '"P.J. Ponder" <ponder@wane-leon-mail.scri.fsu.edu>' wrote:

Steve Walker wrote to John Young:

(large piece snipped; good stuff though.)

+ Suppose the U.S. government had never thought of placing export controls on cryptography...

We would now have widespread use of encryption, both domestically and worldwide; we would be in a state of "Utopia," with widespread availability of cryptography with unlimited key lengths. But, once in this state, we will face situations where we need a file that had been encrypted by an associate who is unavailable (illness, traffic jam, or change of jobs). We will then realize that we must have some systematic way to recover our encrypted information when the keys are unavailable.

The exchange of information among many trusted people all located in the same geographical location (or with regular reliable couriers travelling to different locations) is the ideal situation for *private* not public key crypto. In such circumstances one uses, e.g. IDEA, not PGP. End of corporate problem. End of "worry" about problems with PGP. --tallpaul