🚀 go-pugleaf

One of the major RISKs of requiring key registration is that the
police no longer need probable cause that you've done a REAL crime to
get a warrant for wiretapping - if they suspect you of using unregistered keys, 
based on some probable cause like replying to this news posting :-)
and that's a crime, then they have enough evidence to get a warrant
for wiretapping you and accessing your registered keys -
and if they also read your unencrypted messages, or check out the contents
of your encrypted messages to make sure the keys match, that's gravy for them.
Sure, it wasn't SPECIFICALLY mentioned in the warrant, but it's
covered by the "good faith" exemption to the 4th and 5th Amendments....

Herman Rubin, Joe Francis, and leichter@zodiac.rutgers.edu write about
the similarities between using unregistered keys and keeping two sets
of record books, one for the auditors and one for real.

The difference, except for one-time-pad systems, is that it's possible
to tell whether a given key decrypts the message validly or not -
if the email format identifies the public key, either by inclusion or
by MD-5 checksum, then the Federal Bureau of Intimidation can look
it up in their key registry, and see if either (1) it's not registered, 
or (2) the private key registered for it doesn't decrypt successfully.

With account books, it's tougher to tell if their bogus - sometimes
they just smell bad, but sometimes you need to compare them with lots
of other records before you find the holes.

Unfortunately, it looks like PGP messages do include a Key ID,
which is the lower 64 bits of the key, and is essentially unique.
This means that you can check whether the key is registered by looking it up,
which is quick, instead of decryption, which is slow and hard to automate.
It also means that my plan to register 2**32 keys is less useful,
because they can tell *which* key to decrypt with instead of checking them all.

--
#				Pray for peace;      Bill
#Bill Stewart 908-949-0705 wcs@anchor.ho.att.com AT&T Bell Labs 4M312 Holmdel NJ
# Trickle-Down Economics: Giving money to government bureaucrats 
#	and hoping some will trickle down to the people who need help.