[LEGAL] Crypto as Contraband?

[Dave Emery]

On Sun, Mar 08, 1998 at 04:35:25PM -0500, Dave Emery wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 08, 1998 at 01:55:29PM -0500, Vin McLellan wrote:
> > 
> 	What scares me, as I have said before on this list, is what
> happens when future tamperproof Intel CPUs acquire the ability to run
> encrypted code decrypted inside the processor and all copies of Windows
> 2001 are completely unpatchable and opaque (without breaking the crypto)
> and nicely jiggered to enforce rules about what programs are allowed to
> do what or even run at all.  
> 
	To amplify my point a bit, it is widely reported that Bill Gates
(who is alleged to have started out in business by pirating and selling
DEC software as a high school student) has a particularly keen desire to
control the widespread piracy of MS products.  His aggressive pushes to
assert his property rights are well known (and not atypical of reformed
sinners if the probably apocryphal report is true). 

	And Microsoft, with its enormous market share of Wintel
software, has a very strong incentive to push for implementation of
copyright controls and smartcard authentication for its products into
the basic architecture of PCs.  And guess what - it controls the high
level architecture of the worlds PCs pretty much entirely by its
monopoly control of the major operating systems that run on them.   So
it seems frighteningly likely that Microsoft - which would stand to gain
a lot of money now lost to piracy from such a feature - will very gladly
do all it can to see that crypto based strong copyright enforcement is
built into the hardware and inner regions of the operationg system of
Wintel systems.

	And making this work clearly requires that the relevant parts of
the inner kernel be unmodifiable (easy to do with digital signatures),
and probably kept extremely secret (easy to do with crypto).  In such an
environment it is awfully easy to strike a deal with the government that
adds a little piece or two of code in that black inner space in exchange
for a bending a bit on anti-trust enforcement.  


-- 
	Dave Emery N1PRE,  die at die.com  DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass. 
PGP fingerprint = 2047/4D7B08D1 DE 6E E1 CC 1F 1D 96 E2  5D 27 BD B0 24 88 C3 18