Herb Sutter wrote:

At 20:32 01.17.1996 -0500, Perry E. Metzger wrote:

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Alan Pugh writes:

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infoMCI (sm) Lotus-Security - Lotus Announces Compromise for Export of Strong Encryption

So, Lotus thinks they can fool people by back-dooring in key escrow, eh?

Time to break out the artillery.

Perry

Careful... what would YOU have done, with your customers demanding stronger crypto today and you unable to legally give it to them?

Again, folks, try to remember that this is NOT key escrow... international Notes customers are no worse off than before, and a darn sight better off against everyone besides Uncle Sam.

Herb

Not key escrow - WHAT?!?!? Then, what do you call giving government access to 24 out of 64 bits of the key. This reduces the keyspace to a measly 40 bits. As we have seen - 40 bits is trivial to crack without a multi-billion dollar budget. I think that Lotus did what all corporations do - it thought was best for it's bottom line, and so chose the limited keyspace with key-escrow approach. It is our job (as cypherpunks and US citizens) to show Lotus and the world that this is NOT a good approach. Dan ------------------------------------------------------------------ Dan Oelke Alcatel Network Systems droelke@aud.alcatel.com Richardson, TX