Previous Subject: Re: Clinton Admin. to announce new Crypto regs Rick Smith <smith@securecomputing.com> said:
These "new" regulations "to be issued" are scrambling to catch up with previous and current practices. It doesn't change things at all. . . . Export permission for strong crypto that only encrypts financial data is clearly a variant of this tradition.
This raises an intriguing possibility that I am sure is _not_ intended by the regulators. If the cash is cheap enough, perhaps it could be an economical carrier of encrypted messages. What I have in mind is somewhat analogous to papering your wall with dollar bills, which clearly is uneconomical unless the dollar bills are really cheap. What does it take to set up an offshore "remailer bank"? Of course, the digital cash it uses must be very INefficient, chock full of bit bloat that hosts plenty of not-so-subliminal channels. 8-) Kevin Q. Brown kqb@planet.net
At 3:38 PM -0800 5/8/97, kqb@planet.net wrote:
Previous Subject: Re: Clinton Admin. to announce new Crypto regs
Rick Smith <smith@securecomputing.com> said:
These "new" regulations "to be issued" are scrambling to catch up with previous and current practices. It doesn't change things at all. . . . Export permission for strong crypto that only encrypts financial data is clearly a variant of this tradition.
This raises an intriguing possibility that I am sure is _not_ intended by the regulators. If the cash is cheap enough, perhaps it could be an economical carrier of encrypted messages. What I have in mind is somewhat analogous to papering your wall with dollar bills, which clearly is uneconomical unless the dollar bills are really cheap.
What does it take to set up an offshore "remailer bank"? Of course, the digital cash it uses must be very INefficient, chock full of bit bloat that hosts plenty of not-so-subliminal channels. 8-)
You hit the nail on the head with your last line: subliminal channels. Even financial software, ostensibly with no export controls, will still have to be vetted for export, as any system usable for financial cryptography is almost certainly usable for "other purposes." I suppose that in past generations of "banking software" this was less obviously the case, as SWIFT and whatever the systems were used DES and variants. But as banking software moves to public key approaches, the possibilities drastically multiply. Wanna bet that if a Cypherpunk sets up a digital cash system using extremely strong crypto that it won't be an easy matter to get export approval, no matter what the new rules supposedly are? --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
At 07:42 PM 5/8/97 -0800, Tim May wrote:
At 3:38 PM -0800 5/8/97, kqb@planet.net wrote:
What does it take to set up an offshore "remailer bank"? Of course, the digital cash it uses must be very INefficient, chock full of bit bloat that hosts plenty of not-so-subliminal channels. 8-)
You hit the nail on the head with your last line: subliminal channels.
Even financial software, ostensibly with no export controls, will still have to be vetted for export, as any system usable for financial cryptography is almost certainly usable for "other purposes."
My old line courtesy of a DYAM (Dead Yellow Asian Male): "Revolutionaries swim like fish in the sea of commerce." DCF
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frissell＠panix.com -
kqb＠planet.net -
Tim May