From: "George A. Gleason" <gg@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 93 01:53:11 PDT
To: owner-cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re:  ViaCrypt's PGP
Message-ID: <93Aug27.014641pdt.14451-2@well.sf.ca.us>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Source code for ViaCrypt: 

I believe I raised a point about having some trusted members of the crypto
community (i.e. cypherpunks) examine the source under non-disclosure.
Well...?  This is an entirely reasonable demand.  There are people in this
list who are highly placed professionally, who own companies that are worth
a reasonable sum, or who own houses at least, and therefore who can be
trusted by ViaCrypt to not blow the gig because the resulting lawsuit would
cost them mightily.  So we trust those folks because they're part of this
community, and ViaCrypt would trust them to not blow their NDA because they
could be sued all to hell.  Also from ViaCrypt's perspective, think of the
marketing value of having the product independently certified or validated.
That would certainly be worth something.

NOw if Viacrypt refuses to go with this, that fact in and of itself would be
harmful to their position: it would be a virtual admission that their system
was dirty.  

The question is, who here wants to take this on...?   To me the point is
very straightforward: we have an interest in privacy, and the legal issues
around privacy... the fight to preserve "underground" crypto fits into this
picture, but I can't see any justification for boycotting or trying to tear
down ViaCrypt simply because they're charging a fee for it and are making a
profit on it and all that.  Free markets, right?  A successful ViaCrypt
product would probably spread around to many users who would never have
gotten onboard with PGP, for instance businesses who want to be totally
squeaky clean about the copyright issues.  We need everyone onboard who we
can get, and we *don't* need some kind of PC litmus test of "are you willing
to use underground software?"  

-gg