🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov6.195347.24435@ulysses.att.com>, smb@ulysses (Steven Bellovin) writes:
>That story appears to be false.  See ``Kahn on Codes'', p. 200.
>Briefly, an ``eccentric'' NSA employee wrote to the IEEE warning them
>that a conference session on cryptology was in violation of the law.
>For a time, MIT suspended distribution of (I think) the RSA paper.  The
>Senate Intelligence Committee later investigated, and determined that
>this employee was acting on his own, not in his official capacity or
>with the approval of his superiors.  Kahn appears to believe that,
>incidentally.

Of course this adds little information - fear, uncertainty and doubt
are good tools to use.  Besides, a long-used technique is to just
"imply" that some acts (like this) are expected from the employee but
if the employee gets in trouble because of this that's his own problem
and the organization denies all responsibility.  Anything needn't even
be said.

>U.S. patent law permits applications to filed up to one year after
>publication.  There is nothing underhanded about that; it's simply
>different than in the rest of the world.  And it applies to everyone --
>I know someone who's applying for a patent under just those circumstances,
>and it has nothing whatsoever to do with security or cryptography.

Yes.  And if someone thinks the RSA patent would have gotten through
without a patent secrecy order if the patent had been applied before
publication, I have a nice second-hand bridge to sell, in very good
condition.

Followups directed to alt.conspiracy, as many readers think this is a
group for cryptography, not politics of governments or freedom.

//Jyrki