Optimism re NRC Cryptography Report

[Timothy C. May]

At 11:04 PM 5/30/96, Hal wrote:
>I read the overview of this, and while it is good that the report calls
>for maintaining the legality of domestic encryption and some slight
>loosening of the export rules, overall I was diappointed.

Reading it at the Web site (http://www2.nas.edu/cstbweb/), and looking at
some of the comments here, I'm not as disappointed as I expected to be.

Sure, there is a lot of language about meeting law enforcement needs
(including the disturbing proposal to apply NSA SIGINT capabilities
domestically to help the FBI and law enforcement solve the "growing gap"
problem in telecommunications intercepts), and the language about "56 bit"
systems seems to leave open the door for severe restrictions on stronger
systems (as Hal, Bill Frantz, and others note in their posts).

But, on balance, I think this NRC report comes down strongly enough in
favor of cryptography use for business and individuals that it will
effectively *derail* and *stall* current Administration proposals, give
support to the Burns Bill, and delay key escrow systems for at least
several years.

This should be enough to ensure our victory. (Not that I think that even
fairly repressive legislation would've been enough to defeat us, but a new
breathing spell can only help.)

Unless laws are passed very quickly to outlaw the things we are involved
with, including such things as superencryption, steganography, anonymous
remailers, and digital money, I think we will "win the race to the fork in
the road." The "fork in the road" being the point at which the changes are
unstoppable.

(And I couldn't see much about these technologies....though I haven't read
every line of the Web summary, and have certainly not seen the full
report.)

So, at first reading, I am cautiously optimistic that this NRC report will
carry enough weight to delay crypto legislation long enough to ensure our
ultimate victory. The "degrees of freedom" will soon be too large as to
ever control.

--Tim May


Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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