Enlightened commentary on Netizen.
First, Rebecca Vesely has a special report, the main thrust of which is that three firms being allowed to export 56 bit encryption indicates flexibility on the part of the government. http://www.netizen.com/netizen/97/05/special2a.html To top it off, here are two gems from the followup discussion. http://www.netizen.com/cgi-bin/interact/replies_all?msg.37387 2. 56 ONLY A SLIGHTLY SMALLER JOKE Ric Allan (ricrok) on Wed, 5 Feb 97 11:53 PST If it takes a college student four hours to break a 40bit code it should take him/her about six hours to do the same to 56bits. Then what excuses are the government and its butt-kissing companies going to give us for not allowing *real* coding? 4. 56bits will not take 6 hours to crack Piers Cawley (pdcawley) on Thu, 6 Feb 97 05:05 PST Rick seems to be missing the point about strong encryption -- the reason that DES/IDEA encryption is hard to crack is because the key system is based on the fact that factoring big numbers is a long, slow tedious process which gets exponentially harder as the length of the number increases. What this means is that it'll probably take the college student, ooh... 24 hours to crack a 56 bit key. However, the question has to be asked, why the fuck should we non US citizens go and buy cryptographic software that is deliberately coded to allow the US government to read our mail? -- Anil Das
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 08:41 PM 2/6/97 -0800, Anil Das wrote:
However, the question has to be asked, why the fuck should we non US citizens go and buy cryptographic software that is deliberately coded to allow the US government to read our mail?
You shouldn't. Maybe someone should print up a batch of "Voyeur Enabled" stickers for all the GAKed products (or should that be KRAP products, since it is the Key Recovery Alliance, but that is redundant) we will be seeing at our local software stores. Sometimes I think the reason for all this snake oil we have been seeing is the Feds need it for extra lubricant so they don't chafe themselves while getting off on reading our mail. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 4.5 iQEVAwUBMvyv1+QCP3v30CeZAQEGigf+PA45Q2ySEZ6iLwc8+fRURvXJRinStWwy oNGWKDnyYHFJ91L8Z+11oKvMov45CC4MOISy36/Oz2CY9qyq8l5L1wTU7J8CezsS 3QezDreJtUXr/OCmxRngOQbeHuGDkXuIocfTV7sZU/j7ARWj9hKCd39xf6J/MmZ6 zjKS7olJmzMMyJrAWaNo5zaW4g/ER8wJiI0zbakvrd/8Y+VJkiTN05znbIfLiOTV 0Olt/OaX4seWWNwZb5FaPv2y8ST3j+xm4Uv6fdc4Qo8QGWnGpuBAKo0D+q39KNkY Ps47vKyf2VwQM6Ci49/uuU8um/l9TmDsuHkYYmsoDfsGpcZImEWzZw== =Prg6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --- | "Mi Tio es infermo, pero la carretera es verde!" | |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano@teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.ctrl-alt-del.com/~alan/ |alan@ctrl-alt-del.com|
participants (2)
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Alan Olsen -
Anil Das