🚀 go-pugleaf

>-- George Mitchell (george at tessi.com):        
>
>I believe that all the parti-cipants in this discussion would agree
that: 
>
>When the Government
>can show, through legitimately obtained evidence, that a particular
>encrypted communication relates to a crime, then they can, after
>the fact, subpoena the plaintext of that communication.  What
>most of us object to is having to yield the keys before the fact.

All true George, but not to the point.  The point is that the
government wants INVESTIGATION to be cheap and easy.

In the latest year for which figures are available, the government
will only admit to 666 legal wiretaps.  Now, either that is trivial
or they are doing a large number to which they are not willing to
admit.  The former does not justify the people giving up a fundamental
right.  In the latter case, the kinds of safeguards we are discussing
here will be abused.

The real problem with Dorothy's proposal is that it assumes that the
government is telling the whole truth about their concerns and intentions.  
Their concern is any widespread use of secret codes and their intent is to
resist that by any and all means.  This ruse is simply one of those
means.  Discussing how best to do it is simply to pretend to the
legitimacy of the ruse.

William Hugh Murray, Executive Consultant, Information System Security
21 Locust Avenue, Suite 2D, New Canaan, Connecticut 06840                
203 966 4769, WHMurray at DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL