So, what crypto legislation (if any) is necessary?

[jim bell]

At 08:52 AM 3/29/96 -0800, jamesd at echeque.com wrote:
>On Thu, 28 Mar 1996, jim bell wrote:
>> > Escrowing encrypted keys makes them useless to subpoena, and in 
>> > fact it helps the key owner because the escrow agent can (and, in fact, 
>> > must!) be obligated to inform the key owner if his key is requested.
>
>At 05:49 AM 3/29/96 -0500, Black Unicorn wrote:
>> I thought I would take the time to let everyone know that this is 
>> baseless as well.  Most jurisdictions forbid third parties to reveal 
>> prosecution inquries to the principal for which they are holding 
>> documents or other information.  A VERY few have laws on the books that 
>> require this disclosure.  Switzerland is no longer one of them.
>
>If you had actually read the article that you criticize you would
>have noticed that the "must" was enforced by cryptographic 
>protocols, not by the blunt sword of the law.

I do think it's interesting how Unicorn so easily falls into these mental 
ruts.  He thinks only in terms of what the government wants and what it does 
to get it, not what other people want and what they can do for their own 
benefit.  

One useful function that CP can and should provide is to disseminate ideas 
about future crypto developments, ones that do not merely encrypt and 
decrypt files and messages, but also incorporate encryption into systems so 
that government attacks on them ("legal" as well as surreptitious) are 
guaranteed to be fruitless.

This will require coding, but it will primarily require enough imagination 
to figure out ways around all the tactics normally used to force people to 
give up information to the detriment of citizens.  Ironically, this will 
make people like Unicorn useful, because whether or not his morality is 
intact he may have plenty of examples of how government abuses its position. 
 However, he doesn't appear to have the mental wherewithall or inclination 
to turn those facts into sketches of effective countermeasures.

Jim Bell
jimbell at pacifier.com