🚀 go-pugleaf

jcam2@mdw031.cc.monash.edu.au (Mr J Cameron) writes:

>Furthermore, is it even possible to tell the difference between
>encrypted and non-encrypted data? A good encryption scheme could 'hide'
>cyphertext in some other data, such as an image (steganography). Or you
>could develop your own encryption system that has no well known header
>that would identify it.

All of these "coulds" are silly. No government law ever hpes to eradicate all
bahaviour of the outlawed type- whetehr speeding or murder. Your arguement is
like saying that laws against murder are silly becuase people could cook up
various schemes to murder ewithout being caught. Sure, but so what. A ban on
crypto would get rid of the vast majority of crypto, whether by the average
citizen or by crooks. The use of steganography eliminates the key advantage
of PGP, namely the abilty to send messages to anyone even without a prior
secure channel. If you have to tell the other guy how to decpher your Gif
file to extract the message, that is the same as key exchange by the old
symmetric crypto methods. 

A government ban on crypto is possible. It would eliminate almost all crypto
use by the private citizen. It would not get rid of all crypto but that is
not their intention, or even hope. No one is going to bother setting up a
scheme to i8dentify all encrypted stuff. All they need is scheme which thay
can attach to a certain subset of phone lines.

These threats are real, they will not go away by arguements such as these.
--
Bill Unruh
unruh@physics.ubc.ca