From: Declan McCullagh <declan@pathfinder.com>
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 05:19:23 +0800
To: Secret Squirrel <nobody@secret.squirrel.owl.de>
Subject: Re: IBM sues critics?
In-Reply-To: <19970614184538.11070.qmail@squirrel.owl.de>
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.3.95.970614170740.23228C-100000@cp.pathfinder.com>
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I doubt this is true. The report doesn't mention IBM's KR system, and is
so bland as to be innocuous. If anyone knows otherwise, I'd be interested
in learning more. 

-Declan


On 14 Jun 1997, Secret Squirrel wrote:

> According to a usually reliable contact in a position to know, IBM Friday
> filed a liable suit against the 11 authors of the study
> titled "The risks of key recovery, key escrow and trusted third-party
> encryption" plus their employers and the Centere for Democracy and
> Technology, which sponsored the report.  According to my contact, IBM
> feels that the report directly targets their own key recovery system,
> and falsely implies that it isn't reliable.  They are asking for
> unspecified damages.
> 
> This means IBM is suing such people as Matt Blaze, Whitfield
> Diffie, and Ronald Rivest, along with AT&T, Sun, Microsoft, and MIT
> over the question of whether its key recovery system really works.
> Considering that truth is a defense and the details of the
> IBM system could be part of the defense's evidence, it should be an
> interesting trial to say the least.
> 
> I have not seen the actual court papers and really have no idea
> whether my contact is totally accurate.  Can anyone confirm the details?
> I just read the study in question, and it sounds like IBM is totally
> out of line and trying to intimidate its critics with threats of expensive
> if frivolous lawsuits. On the other hand, some of the parties named
> in the suit (Microsoft, AT&T) have their own armies of lawyers
> to defend themselves, so it's hard to be sure of what's going on here.
> 
> I think the report is still at www.crypto.com or www.cdt.org.
> 
>