alternative to Fair Cryptosystems
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'm slow reading my cp mail and saw a reference to Micali's Fair Cryptosystems (what a name!). There is a simple alternative -- also to Clipper. You can have your surveillance agency (or agencies which need to cooperate) publish their own RSA keys (big ones, presumably), and all the good little boys and girls who want to prove how obedient and conformist they are can include those keys as recipients when they encrypt messages. If there are to be multiple agencies which have to cooperate, the PGP or RIPEM software would have to change to split the message key by XOR with ranno pieces, but in the meantime, you could just include the FBI in your list of recipients and save everybody the hassle of having to get pieces to put together. Simple -- direct -- speaks right to the gov't desire. What could be wrong with this? - Carl -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.4 iQCzAgUBLT6w6njfNbIrNWRxAQH7gQTvS3ZzwSMfzbE6XjWaHmNxVqPt7QPPGlqi pkMwF1IX/AyZ6VSOsETPGANwgMjk9NBDQNutNvpmZHnCm90smz+Z1q70/Pg5wY9F mY19U68G38qrYvv6YIAYTcW38O3vDpDnpqeltnrZ2yf7WR9ujfiEJZdPOdgkMJ7r KEqWTkvP36yxOBaZ0ozORDgZrnDJmHuRCWLYlWSiZsr5laI4NSo= =63Vw -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Carl Ellison:
all the good little boys and girls who want to prove how obedient and conformist they are can include those [TLA] keys as recipients when they encrypt messages...what could be wrong with this?
Would the "boys and girls" with this choice be the users or the comm equipment manufacturers? If the users, the system would become that much more user hostile (already a big barrier to common use of crypto). If the manufacturers, the system would not be practically different from today's, where manufacturers are free to choose their encryption method but get leaned on by the government in various ways to use weak methods. Nick Szabo szabo@netcom.com
participants (2)
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Carl Ellison -
szabo@netcom.com