🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov4.125819.1637@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu> denning@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu writes:
>As someone has said, "A society that cannot enforce its laws invites
>disrespect for those laws."  But regulating crypto may not be a good
>solution either unless we can come up with an acceptable means.

I'm reassured to hear this.  :-) 

The issues are not really technical (though key registration would
obviously kill valuable protocols that do not use long-lived keys);
they are problems with the use of broad legal prohibition to
restrict actions which in a small minority cause harm.  I know,
you're only talking about key registration -- but that can be
phrased as prohibition of secure encryption.  (And "insecure
encryption" borders on oxymoronic...)  Such prohibition has
generally proved to be a poor move; see "War on Drugs".

Again, I'm ditching the Constitutional issues, because you can bet
the Supreme Court will.

>Someone asked whether John Gotti would have used encryption.  I don't
>know, but he didn't.

An interesting question is whether the FBI has ever been unable to
conduct an investigation because communications were found to be
encrypted.  People have given example of how wiretaps have been
successfully used to catch all sorts of unpleasant people; I should
think that examples of wiretaps that could *not* be carried out
would be more germane.

Hmm.  Wait until the FBI hears about quantum cryptography.  They'll
have a hard time requiring eavesdropping access to *that*.

>Dorothy Denning
>denning@cs.georgetown.edu

   Eli   ebrandt@jarthur.claremont.edu