At 08:41 PM 2/6/97 -0800, Anil Das wrote:

First, Rebecca Vesely has a special report, the main thrust of which is that three firms being allowed to export 56 bit encryption indicates flexibility on the part of the government. http://www.netizen.com/netizen/97/05/special2a.html To top it off, here are two gems from the followup discussion. http://www.netizen.com/cgi-bin/interact/replies_all?msg.37387

2. 56 ONLY A SLIGHTLY SMALLER JOKE Ric Allan (ricrok) on Wed, 5 Feb 97 11:53 PST

If it takes a college student four hours to break a 40bit code it should take him/her about six hours to do the same to 56bits. Then what excuses are the government and its butt-kissing companies going to give us for not allowing *real* coding?

Ironically, we (the good guys) are going to be the beneficiaries of an ignorant public, for a change! We all know that difficulty is not linear with bit-size, but hearing that "40 bits is crackable in four hours!" will be interpreted by non-technical people as a strong level of suspicion directed at DES as well. Jim Bell jimbell@pacifier.com