Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?

[Daniel T. Hagan]

On Thu, 7 Nov 1996, Peter Hendrickson wrote:

> > If I understand the reasoning, people beleive it is easier to prevent the
> > release of strong crypto. techiniques than to remove them once they are
> > released.
> 
> The reasons underlying this are what I don't completely understand.
> 
> > Once a terrorist has strong crypto, why should they stop using it if it
> > becomes illegal?
> 
> Use of strong crypto would be a tip off that one is a terrorist.
> 
> If strong cryptography were unpopular and highly illegal, very few
> people would be using it.  This makes it easy to identify suspects.
> 
> Peter Hendrickson
> ph at netcom.com
> 


I think the reasons are probably tied closely to your second point.
Unless strong cryptography was easily distinguishable from weak
cryptography without taking the time to break it, then how would they
(law enforcement) recognize that someone was using strong cryptography?

Or suppose that some one uses strong cryptography and then wraps it in 
weak cryptography.  The outer shell would seem legal, and the authorities
can't go around randomly breaking people's keys (or so one would assume),
and even if they did, it wouldn't necessarily be legal as evidence anyway.

And finally, you have to consider the possibility of whether a person can
be identified merely by the fact that there is a message that is
intercepted that has strong cryptography in it.  I don't know enough about
remailers and internet protocols/servers to say whether this is a
reasonable objection or not, perhaps someone else does?

So, unless I'm incorrect about one of the above points (and I admit that I
may well be), once cryptography reaches a certain strength, there is no
reason to relinquish that strength, particularly if you are using it for
criminal activity.  

Daniel

---
Daniel Hagan                 http://acm.vt.edu/~dhagan                CS Major 
dhagan at vt.edu 	       http://acm.vt.edu/~dhagan/PGPkey.html     Virginia Tech
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