At 10:11 PM 1/28/97 -0600, Mike McNally wrote:

Somebody wrote:

...

This morning at the RSA keynote, David Aaron, the US Crypto ambassador quoted the "Sovreign Right of Lawful Access" as something that goverments were determined to preserve.

Speaking as a private indiwidual, and not as a drone in the employ of IBM (don't get me started on the "but wait, key recovery *isn't* the same as key escrow" hoo-ha), that dude scared the piss out of me.

I think that terminology is odd. They're getting desperate. "Soverign Right of Lawful Access" doesn't state HOW DIFFICULT that "access" is to be. Interpreted broadly, that would outlaw any encryption even if it only impeded that access a tiny bit! Or under an alternative interpretation, the mere fact that it is hypothetically possible to decrypt a message means that nothing (other than mathematical improbability) stands in the way of doing the decrypt. Also, it didn't say SECRET ACCESS, although experience tells us that they (the thugs) probably assume this. I've long pointed out that ordinary search warrants require informing people who are being searched, even if they're not home and assuming the thugs didn't trash the place the way they frequently like to. I see no reason to believe that the advent of telephone technology in the late 1800's should have retroactively re-written the US Constitution to make secret searches okay. Technically, the Bill of Rights prohibits "unreasonable searches and siezures," and doesn't specifically mention the secrecy issue, but since (am I correct in this, Real Lawyers <tm>?) the practice up until that time required people searched to be informed of searches, a change in policy that wiretaps could be secret sounds more like taking advantage of a technological windfall, not "discovering" that the Constitution allowed something that had always before been prohibited. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com