CDR: Re: Zero Knowledge changes business model (press release)

[Bill Stewart]

At 03:56 PM 11/1/00 -0500, David Honig wrote:
>(Now, it may be 'sad' that ZKS has changed its bizmodel to service
>businesses that need locks in series, but I'm only interested in
>whether its rational to universally denounce any locks-in-series
>architectures.)

We need to be careful not to let GAKKers define our perspectives.
Locks-in-series is a much different problem than locks-in-parallel,
which is the usual GAK/CorporateGAK model.   (Or alternatively,
user-locks-in-parallel-with-(GAK-locks-in-series), 
so it takes two corporate officers to agree to eavesdrop.)
Locks-in-series are often are solutions to increasing privacy, 
not decreasing it.

For example, especially in the health care business,
current practice is that just about anybody can get at
all of customer data, and there's a real need for privacy
protection technology that puts stricter controls on people
getting at data they do or don't need to know.
In the US, where we don't have the benefit of Canadian Health Care (:-),
the US government's Medicare requirements and tax policies
have pushed insurance companies to use Social Security Numbers
as their customer-ID numbers, and pushed businesses to use
SSNs as their interface to the insurance companies,
and doctors to use SSNs since they need to deal with insurance.
Even locks-in-parallel on data can provide more privacy than
the current screen-doors-on-data level of protection.

In spite of the usual PR behaviour that has PR people vaguely
paraphrasing things that might have been technical concepts once,
there are times you *really* need to let the technical people
vet press releases before letting them out the door,
or the crypto or privacy people will ream you badly :-)
				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart at pobox.com
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