Letter Re: Kahn Supporting GAK

[jim bell]

At 09:35 PM 2/5/97 +0000, Robert Rothenburg 'Walking-Owl' wrote:
>Good point: but I've seen a few refs from LEAs about "Drug Dealer X 
>who we can't talk about" or "Child Pornographer Y who we can't talk 
>about" (in lieu of cases being digested by the court system) so I 
>didn't harp on that point.
>
>A point I did leave out was that if they already knew these people 
>were criminals and were building cases against them, monitoring them 
>enough to know they used crypto, then do they really need to bother 
>with listening in to the exact message?


I think it would be appropriate to insist that these guys (the LEAs) 
document their need for decryption, by providing "us" (the public) with an 
encrypted version of the data that they have accessed but cannot understand, 
as well as its source and what case it's associated with.  The LEAs would 
encrypt it and publicize it (not openly identifying the details) but with 
the promise that the key to unlock the information would be released within, 
say, a year or even earlier once a case is brought.  Included within the 
encrypted identification would be references sufficient to identify the case 
involved.

If they have any doubts as to why they should do this, we should point out 
that we see no reason to believe their claims, but we want to give them the 
maximum opportunity to prove them without requiring that they spill the 
beans, completely, now.   

Jim Bell
jimbell at pacifier.com