At 02:43 PM 8/31/2001 -0400, Fausting wrote:

Tim wrote:

...

But, as with Kirchoff's point, the attacker is going to get the design eventually. If getting the design "eventually" were good enough, why the keen interest in putting in a large order for the beta? There's a reason.

What's the reason? If the goal was disassembly and analysis, it wouldn't be necessary to buy more than one copy - and even buying one copy is mostly a formality, though it's probably a lot cheaper and faster than any of the other ways people might get it. Still, it wouldn't exactly be a big problem for them to buy a single copy (or a few copies) with more-or-less untraceable addresses and credit cards. If they disclosed their identity, they already had what they needed, or were sure they could get it one way or another. The beta was available - I've forgotten the exact timing, by now - to anybody with a credit card and an Internet connection, and CD-ROM copies of the beta were handed out at web/internet-oriented conferences. ZKS was not (nor is anyone else with distribution on any interesting scale) faced with the choice "Shall I let the various three-letter-agencies have a copy of my software?". ZKS was faced with the choice "Would we like to get a lot, a little, or no money from the NSA?", and it's hard to blame them for taking the cash. Further, they've been open (since late 1999/early 2000, at least) about wanting to encourage and facilitate law enforcement and intelligence community use of their system, so that those groups come to see ZKS/Freedom as a system which has good and bad aspects, instead of just bad ones .. in hopes that a more nuanced (or conflicted) view of Freedom's utility would slow down or stop regulatory activity aimed at ZKS.

Maybe in the long run, it's right to view any objections as being little more than irrelevant, moralistic hand-waving. But I don't find the "they're going to compromise it anyway so why not make a buck when we can" line of reasoning particularly satisfying.

Well, no, it's not especially elegant or poetic, but it's simple economics, which are at the heart of both successful business and successful cryptography. If ZKS refused to sell to NSA, what would have changed, except for their ability to crow "We told NSA to fuck off!" ..?

All place-in-the-pecking-order issues aside, roughly how long do you think it's going to take before "dissident-grade untraceability" becomes a reality? If anyone deigns to show me why the prospects are better than "bleak", I'd love to be proven wrong.

"Dissident-grade untraceability" (DGU) is an elusive goal - if you look at what's theoretically possible, we've got it now (and have had it for ~ 20 years, albeit with an unfriendly UI). If you look at what's deployed, we'll probably never get there, because it's a multi-layered problem, where holes appear in layers far beyond the control of any individual or organization. Maybe ZKS can give me really great privacy within the 7-layer stack, but they can't do anything about someone torturing me until I confess to crimes I did (or didn't) commit, or undercover agents who pretend to be fellow dissidents but are actually secret policemen, or snoopy busybodies who notice that every time I use the computer at the local cybercafe, a few hours later a new issue of The Squealing Rodent hits Usenet full of irresponsible rumors about the Administration .. or that during the months I was on "vacation" in solitary confinement, no new issues were published. DGU is just like other kinds of security - it's not a product or service you can buy from someone, even if you're really careful to pick the right vendor. Maybe you can pick a vendor who does a good job within their area of responsibility - and maybe you can pick a vendor who'll tell you really clearly which problems they solve and which problems they don't - but it's silly to expect anyone (be it ZKS or SafeWeb or anonymous remailers or anyone else) to provide perfect untraceability on a silver platter, such that users don't need to pay any attention themselves. You'll never get real-world perfect untraceability if you've got human beings at the ends of the "anonymous" communication pipes. -- Greg Broiles gbroiles@well.com "We have found and closed the thing you watch us with." -- New Delhi street kids