🚀 go-pugleaf

Professor Denning's idea is not only unpopular. It's not original and it
doesn't work.

In 1986, while I was working for an international bank, we suddenly had to
deal with it for real. 

President Botha of South Africa published a decree that no-one in his 
country could use cryptology unless details of the algorithm and copies of 
the encryption keys were lodged with the SA Communications Security Agency 
in Vermeulen Street, Pretoria.

This caused some consternation, as it would have wrecked the security of a 
number of systems, and forced us to break undertakings given to the UK and 
US governments (under which banks shipped crypto boxes to branches outside 
NATO on the condition that we did not pass the technology on to the local 
governments).

My employers disinvested.

What's more, the SA banks called Botha's bluff; they told him that key 
management was indeed a pest, and they'd be delighted to give the army the 
keys to the ATMs. Of course, whenever one of them was a few thousand Rand 
out of balance, they'd just send the bill to the Minister of Defence.

Botha had to back off! 



Ross