🚀 go-pugleaf

Rob Stampfli (res@colnet.cmhnet.org) wrote:
.....
: Suppose the "annonymous informant", or the "expert" who doesn't know as much
: as he thinks he knows, gives the authorities an encrypted message using a key
: you have never seen before, but which, he alleges, originates from you.
: Suppose the tap of your ISDN line misses a few bytes at the start of your
: message.  Under these conditions there is little you can do, even if you
: desire to be cooperative.  However, your failure to produce the desired
: result would place you in considerable legal jeopardy under what is being
: proposed here.

Even better, when confronted with the intercepted ciphertext and
commanded to product the plaintext, Alice says "OK, but where's the
rest of it?"

Her interrogators say "Huh?" She then explains that she split her
message up into pieces and they must've missed some of them. Sorry,
but there's nothing she can do about it.

Can the authorities demand she reconstruct, from memory, the original
message? Probably not, from my reading of the Constitution, from
precedents about the 5th Amendment, and from the many messages on this
topic.

This just illustrates another impracticality of key registration,
especially when crypto methods are mixed in with compression, packet
systems, dynamic generation of keys, etc.

I suspect the inevitable consequence of a key registration system
would be severe restrictions on networks (all would be run by
authorities), demands that messages be checksummed and signed be
government authorities, and even that plaintext be archived and
produced late under court order.



--Tim May
-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^756839 | PGP Public Key: awaiting Macintosh version.