This would be the same Strassmann who stated in public at Harvard early in 1995 that most remailers were run by intelligence agencies such as the KGB, then denied saying it when asked for substantiation? And cut it from his paper? On Thu, 6 Feb 1997, Vin McLellan wrote:

Strassmann, the author of this denunciation of RSADS and Ian Goldberg, is the former Director of Defense Information (i.e., CIO,) of the Bush DoD and an often-insightful commentator

Having said that, there is some debate about the extent to which in *intelligence gathering* as opposed to, say, trying to crack a banking protocol, one can reasonably count on a known plaintext. And much debate about the processing costs of not having one, especially when one doesn't know what kind of document is being encrypted (e.g. is it ASCII plaintext? a spreadsheet? a jpeg? etc.). I think that's his (misdirected) point. A. Michael Froomkin | +1 (305) 284-4285; +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax) Associate Professor of Law | U. Miami School of Law | froomkin@law.miami.edu P.O. Box 248087 | http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA | It's warm here.