40 bit DES [Was:Re: !! Point 'n Crypt]

[stewarts at ix.netcom.com]

Walt Armour <walt at blarg.net> wrote:
> If I encrypt a $10 million dollar proposal and then get 86'd in 
> a car accident I would like to go to my grave knowing that the 
> company could get the proposal back.  ....

Anyone who stores a $10m proposal on only one machine, 
without making backups on somebody else's machine, preferably
out of the building, is asking for the Clue Fairy to send him
disk drive gremlins and software from Bill Gates to scribble on his disk,
and his company should probably consider 86ing him before he
strikes again :-)

Slightly more seriously, there are certainly corporate reasons to
store backups of keys for important data, such as backup tapes
and communications.  GAK-style technology is the wrong level approach
for communications -  GAK-style access to keys is useless unless
you've also backed up the data, so if your corporate officers need
the data, give it to them encrypted with their own keys.
Similarly, if you want backup access to keys used to encrypt files, 
back up the keyrings, maybe using a secret-sharer if you want to require
multiple people to access the backup, or just have the backups of 
the files encrypted with the keys for the backup server. 

> BUT in regards to the general populace, I do not advocate any form of 
> key escrow/recovery.

#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts at ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk
#     (If this is posted to cypherpunks, I'm currently lurking from fcpunx,
#     so please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)