Why escrow? (was Re: How would Leahy bill affect crypto

[jim bell]

At 06:25 PM 3/14/96 +0000, Deranged Mutant wrote:
>On 14 Mar 96 at 12:00, jim bell wrote:
>
>> At 07:57 AM 3/14/96 +0000, Deranged Mutant wrote:
>> >Would it be legal to deceive an escrow agent?
>> 
>> It _should_ be legal.  At least, assuming the arrangement is truly voluntary 
>> and the escrow agent gets his part of the bargain (his usual fee) he has no 
>> interest in knowing whether or not the data he's holding for you is "real" 
>> or "imaginary."  
>
>I mean illegal in the sense that your true purpose is to decieve law 
>enforcement. (Yes, it'll also fake out anyone who bribes the escrow 
>agent for your keys, though....)

As long as they claim that escrowing keys is "voluntary" in the first place, 
then I find it hard to imagine that they would have a legal claim against 
you if the key you "escrowed" was phony.  OTOH, if one potentially-valid 
interpretation of the law is that failing to give the keys when you're asked 
is a crime, presumably even if you never had them in the first place, then 
all bets are off.  IMO, a properly-designed crypto telephone keeps nothing 
with it that would later be useable to decrypt the conversations it has 
transmitted or received; one danger in this bill is that its very existence 
might make the manufacture of crypto phones with this characteristic 
illegal, on the theory that because they keep no keys, the user is going to 
be in violation of this law automatically.  It's a stretch, but a stretch 
the government is always anxious to make.

And if you recall the requirements the government wanted to put on 
telephones equipped with Clipper, one thing they eventually admitted was 
that they were insisting that such phones be designed to be inoperable with 
a telephone that had its "key-escrow" not "enabled".  And they still wanted to 
call it "voluntary!  That's a laugh!


>Of course that depends how you give your key to an escrow agent. If 
>it's already escrowed when you buy a phone, for instance...

That's the real danger with any such legislation.  Individuals can generally 
only get things that are manufactured for sale.  (You can't buy a car with a 
7-cylinder engine, for instance...)  If manufacturers are dissuaded from 
building a good crypto telephone, then key-escrow can be as "voluntary" as 
you want and you still won't be able to exercise your rights. 

Jim Bell
jimbell at pacifier.com