From: usura@vox.xs4all.nl (Alex de Joode) Date: Tue, 20 Sep 94 22:24:56 +0200

There are basicly four scenario's that a state can follow to regulate crypto:

- outlaw it totally - key depositing - try to develop a standart

- do nothing

The most prosperous scenario. Crypto use will boom, but lawenforcement agencies will be deprived from a useful tool, they can't bug phones any more.

I think this is wishful thinking on our parts. Crypto would have to be built-in and automatic (not even a button push required to activate it) before I think you'd see much of a user community. Even then, some people might encounter key exchange problems and beg for a button to *disable* crypto. Until you see a substantial percentage of the population using crypto, I don't think law enforcement will have any problem. They'll worry about drug dealers as a new potential threat, but have them read Kahn about Rum Runners (in a chapter with that in the title). -------------- To me, it's obvious that this isn't a real LE problem. That leaves open the question of why the US and others want to limit crypto. I think part of the answer comes from the USACM report, in the second paragraph of chapter 4. "The development of telecommunications in the 19th century, first via cable and later by radio, presented a challenge to national security so severe as to challenge the very notion of national sovereignty. Nations could still regulate the flow of people and products across their borders, but in a process that continues unabated, news, ideas, and information began to travel in channels far harder to control." This sounds like either a Cypherpunk or Clint Brooks wrote it. I'd guess the latter but I think they'd both be wrong. Since when have nations seen their people as imprisoned? We limit the speech of prisoners, but of citizens? When did nations ever care about limiting the speech of citizens, before the middle of this century (with the advent of OSS/CIA thinking)? Was travel prohibited? Were private conversations with foreigners prohibited? -------------- So -- the argument is bogus. Why advance it? My answer: because the Agency advancing it (with cypherpunks as unwitting accomplices) wants to create the perception of a threat of loss of power in those who have power (Congress, President) so that they'll give state-of-emergency powers to the appropriate Agency to fight back. Net result: no real threat; real increase in power for one Agency. +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Carl M. Ellison Phone: (301) 854-6889 | |Trusted Information Systems, Inc. FAX: (301) 854-5363 | |3060 Washington Road | |Glenwood MD 21738 E-mail: cme@tis.com | | | |RIPEM MD5OfPublicKey: 39 D9 86 06 86 A9 F0 75 A9 A8 3D 49 58 9C 67 7A| |PGP 2.6.1 Key fingerprints: E0 41 4C 79 B5 AF 36 75 02 17 BC 1A 57 38 64 78| | 61 E2 DE 7F CB 9D 79 84 E9 C8 04 8B A6 32 21 A2| +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+