🚀 go-pugleaf

strnlght@netcom.com (David Sternlight) writes:
>
>When mathew asks where he can get his free copy of RSAREF I fear he
>is being both misleading and disingenuous.
>[...because he's in Europe...]
>He can't get RSAREF since it falls under the Munitions Act.

You're also being both misleading and disingenuous.  I'm in America,
and I can't legally use anything based on RSAREF (including the
current *netrek* client), because I'm not an American citizen.

"Where you are" has nothing to do with it.  "Who you are" is the
crux of the matter.  As an emissary of Her Majesty's Government,
it's assumed that I'm going to perform Nasty Acts of Espionage
if I ever get my hands on US-produced cryptographic material.
As a result, it's made illegal for American citizens to give me
such material.

The intelligent people out there -- mathew, for instance --
recognize that imposing bans on easily-transmissible information
is utterly stupid.  If the Enemies of the State *want* RSAREF
(or whatever), they can very easily get it.  So why make things
difficult on the regular humans?  Why make it hard for me to play
netrek?

Let's pretend that underneath my quiet, reserved Systems Analyst
clothes there's an Evil Spy who wants to steal RSA stuff and
communicate with the Evil Headquarters at will.

Evil Spy dials the Evil Headquarters direct with a proprietary
modem.  Evil Spy downloads a proprietary encryption executable
which has been crypted.  Evil Spy decrypts the executable with
information from a book cypher posted in a falsified article in
rec.sport.basketball.pro.  Evil Spy uses secret methods to get
ahold of RSA-based executables or source (the netrek client,
for instance).  Evil Spy encrypts the Important Military Secret
with his proprietary executable, uuencodes it, converts it to
EBCDIC, and forges an alt.binary.pictures.erotica jpeg posting
with the low bit of every byte containing another bit of the
EBCDIC bytecodes.  He then puts the real jpeg up for anonymous
ftp on a porn gif site so that Evil Headquarters can determine
what the correct decoding scheme is.  At the same time, he posts
twenty other gifs and engages in routine chatter in 
rec.sport.basketball.pro and other newsgroups.

I'm *quite confident* that there's no way in hell that the NSA
(or anyone else, for that matter) could determine what was going
on in time to stop the transmission of information.  As soon as
the information is transmitted, of course, I have diplomatic
immunity and a plane home to Stoke-on-Trent.  Evil Spy mission
accomplished.

This even works for suitably low values of "proprietary encryption
executable" and "secret methods to get ahold of RSA-based executables."
One could use a 30-line table lookup C program for the first and
anonymous ftp to any number of places for the second.

>Ethics is hard, sometimes, but trust me--it's worth it.

You're accidentally interpreting a missive from the government as
a code of ethics.  Ethics come from the inside.  I consider it
unethical to, for instance, monitor or record day-to-day communications
without a warrant or reason to suspect criminal activity -- yet the
NSA [reportedly] does this frequently.  I also consider it unethical
to support dictatorial regimes, to trade American and Iraqi lives for
oil, to wage undeclared wars using illegally-obtained funds, and
to sell weapons of mass destruction on the global market.  I do not
consider it unethical to communicate in a private fashion.

My problem with you, Mr. Sternlight, is that you're correct in
your support of the legal issues, but incorrect in your support (or
ignorance) of their basis.  Yes, a country that has a decent code of
laws which the people obey is a good country.  No, the law that states
that mathematical algorithms can be patented is not a realistic nor
a fair law.  No, the law that states that security of information is
limited to the government only is not a realistic nor a fair law.

We as individuals posting to these newsgroups are not, in general,
presidents of major international corporations or wealthy cryptoanalysis
enthusiasts.  We're students, programmers, systems analysts, and computer
specialists.  As such, we lack both the resources and the time to 
challenge the government in the areas in which it is wrong; perhaps by
ignoring its unenforceable policies, we'll be able to build a groundswell
which will eventually overcome the ignorance evident in the high places
of our country.

>David


Felix Gallo
Systems Analyst, Cooperative Computing Inc.
(512) 328 2300             felixg@coop.com