Voice crypto: the last crypto taboo

Tim May tcmay at got.net
Mon Aug 6 22:18:15 PDT 2001


On Monday, August 6, 2001, at 09:52 PM, Dr. Evil wrote:

>> Starian, the company founded by Eric Blossom and others, had a 3DES 
>> unit
>> the size of an external modem that worked as described. (I have one.)
>>
>> The problem is the "fax effect":  who ya gonna call?
>
> No, in the case of Starium, the problem is decidely not the fax
> effect.  The problem is that they aren't selling them!  You can't buy
> one, which basically guarantees that no one you call will have one.  A
> corollary to this problem often affects high-tech companies: they have
> an awesome new technology, but they haven't sorted out how to market
> it.

I bought one, and I know of several others who have bought them. As to 
whether they are _currently_ selling any models, I can't say. But this 
doesn't change my "fax effect" point.

> Perhaps those groups have some use for these things, but in my case, I
> would create a "cell" of two: me and my lawyer.  Client-attorney
> communications are legally protected; this just provides a technical
> means to implement an established, almost sacrosanct legal protection.

Yes, of course. We know things like this.

> I don't think that's true at all!  A company with huge resources (like
> Miscrosoft) can solve the fax effect by creating standards (often
> "closed" or proprietary standards) and getting things widely deployed
> by buying major partners, but that is certainly not the only way to do
> it.  You don't need a lot of resources or a wide deployment to solve
> the fax effect.  I imagine that the fax machine overcame the fax
> effect when a company with, for example, an east coast and a west
> coast office bought two of them and then could send documents coast to
> coast in seconds.  They didn't care that no one else had one; it was
> boosted productivity immediately.

You clearly don't understand the usual meaning of "fax effect." Fax 
machines have existed in the form you describe for close to a century. 
This was not what writers in the early 90s were referring to when they 
spoke of the "fax effect."




>  Let's say that for some reason a
> company needs to send documents within 24 hours, and the only two
> options are couriers on flights, or this new-fangled fax machine.  A
> pair of fax machines pays for itself within the first few documents
> that need to be sent, even if no other fax machines exist in the
> universe.  Sooner or later, there will be a bunch of companies with
> two offices which use these things internally, and then one day, in a
> blinding flash, someone at Company A needs to send a document to
> Company B, and remembers that his friend there mentioned that they
> also have a "telphone facsimile machine", and in an instant, the world
> changes forever!

Naive. Faxes were available in the 1970s, and earlier. They did not 
"change the world overnight." For one thing, they were not accepted as 
legal docs. For another, transmission speeds were too slow.

(We had fax machines to our remote plants in 1974, but we almost always 
used TWX and Telex transmissions. And they didn't "change the world 
overnight." They were just another channel.)

The fax effect is the same as the phone effect. Your analysis would have 
had the first two phone changing the world overnight. No. What changed 
was when a significant fraction of one's suppliers, delivery agencies, 
shipping companies, customers, etc. all could be reached via a 
compatible, interoperable standard. The "phone effect."

>> ObSpoliationClaim: "Those who buy such machines are obviously trying to
>> hide evidence. Mr. Happy Fun Court is "not amused.""
>
> That is very true.  Someone trying to defeat a charge of being a boss
> in a drug gang would certainly not be helped if they found Starium
> units in his house and in houses of people who were distributing
> drugs.  This would look bad for Starium, too.

Irony is wasted on some people.


--Tim May





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