🚀 go-pugleaf

dunc@netcom.com (Kevet Duncombe) writes:

>kind of society in which you live.  Any group offering a major threat to
>society surely won't be deterred by a bit of legislation.  It might take
>a year or two for the black market to ramp up, but when something can be
>done by one person using off the shelf parts, it'd take pretty draconian
>legislation to stop it.

They got Al Capone on tax evasion.  Imagine you're a drug dealer.  Betcha
dollars to doughnuts if they can't nail you, they'd gladly convict you on 
"failure to fork over your secret password" charges.

Also, if all the law abiding citizens have handed over their passwords
and you happen upon illicit traffic, you can feel pretty sure that it's 
actually illicit.  If you just happen upon encrypted traffic, you might
waste a lot of MY taxpayer money finding out that X is having an affair
with Y.

Despite these points, I oppose the proposal.  Here's a couple of 
thoughts:

I change my passwords a *lot*.  Sometimes once a message.  I just don't
think I'm going to want to make it out to the bank three times a day to
register everything I do.

Suppose I encrypt a message.  I defy you to make me give you an accurate source.
Now, I give the bank one password, which decrypts the even numbered bytes in
the file and yields "Hey, BOB!  Let's go fishing sometime without Bill."
I use another password, which decrypts the odd numbered bytes in the file
and yields "14 billion copies of Dbase IV leave NY tomorrow concealed in
piles of manure."

Or something.

-- 
I really don't make any claim at all to know what I'm talking about.
Actually, I make no claim to know what YOU'RE talking about, either.
In fact, now I've forgotten what we were talking about . . .