SS Obergruppenfuhrer Zimmermann (NOT!)
Peter Trei
trei at process.com
Wed Jan 24 15:56:38 PST 1996
Patiwat Panurach asks:
> On Tue, 23 Jan 1996, Duncan Frissell wrote:
> > On the whole, the cypherpunks have gotten very favorable press for a group
> > who's actions may render government policies irrelevant and possibly the
> > governments themselves.
> Would you call cypherpunks (as a group and as a philosophy) to be
> influential? Do you think governments listen to us much? Are they forced
> to listen to us? Any stuff to support this? Please give me your comments.
Yes, I would say the actions of the people active on this list have had
significant effectst. To give one example:
Last summer, 'we' broke 40-bit RC4. Within a week or two, the
US government started to discuss making 64-bit escrowed crypto
exportable (not acceptable, but it's a change).
In the private sector, the opinion in a lot of US firms was 'yeah,
40 bits may be weak, but marketing wants to have a single "secure
version" of the product, so we'll sell the 40 bit version domestically
and abroad - after all, 40 bits is only theoretically weak - no one's ever
broken it."
After the highly publicized SSL crack, it suddenly became a *lot*
easier for engineers to argue for separate domestic versions with
stronger encryption. I personally know of three firms where this
occured, and I'm sure there are more.
Peter Trei
Senior Software Engineer
Purveyor Development Team
Process Software Corporation
http://www.process.com
trei at process.com
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