From: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com (bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com +1-510-484-6204)
Date: Sun, 24 Jul 94 03:30:56 PDT
To: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com
Subject: Re:  "Key Escrow" --- the very idea
Message-ID: <9407241029.AA10506@anchor.ho.att.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Keywords: ranting, crime in cypherspace
X-Oops: let's try including the contents file this time:-)

Mike_Spreitzer.PARC@xerox.com writes

> (1) I'm not an anarchist.  Does that make me out of place here?  
No problem, as long as you can handle surprising rhetoric on occasion :-)
> I'm willing to live with some amount of government, 
I don't see that there's much choice, and after we get rid of the first 90%
of the government I'll be happy to debate theory for the other 10% :-)

> My biggest problem with Capstone is that it
> changes the balance of power too much.
It's more than a change - it's a declaration that the government
already had the *right* to control all your communications,
and is just now getting around to implementing it.
But aside from the arrogance, I'll agree that it's too much power for them.

By the way, you used the term "social contract" in your letter.
Somehow, the government has gotten the idea that the "social contract"
is between them and us, rather than between us and us.  It's not,
or at least none of the copies *I* signed included them...


> (2) I think crimes can be committed in cyberspace.  Substantially, if not
> entirely, in cyberspace.  Maybe not so many now.  

I have to agree, and I distinguish between "real crimes" vs. "laws".
a) Untraceable payments for physical violent crimes (e.g. kidnap ransom)
b) Better communications for conspiring to do violence (murder contracts...)
c) Bank Robbery (any respectable digibank can protect itself technically,
   but we're already seeing Teller Machine card forging in Britain,
   and other banks will probably have weaknesses as we learn digibanking.)
d) Forgery - digital signatures are great, if they're long enough,
   but protecting your keys is more critical than it used to be.
e) Fraud - you'll probably have to do a better job checking reputations
   for a digital stockbroker living behind anonymous remailers paid with
   digicash than you currently do for physically traceable brokers like
   Ivan Boesky.  
f) Extortion - it's hard to break somebody's legs in cyberspace,
   but you can send the threat that way, and tell where to send the money;
   you can also threaten to publish their private key which you stole.

Of course, the big "crimes" that the government usually wants to
use wiretapping for are things like drugs and money laundering,
both of which are none of their business.

> I accept the terms of the 4th amendment: search and seizure allowed
> when due process followed.  

The 4th amendment's terms aren't for you - they're for the government
to obey.  While I suspect the authors of the amendment assumed the
government would seize criminals and search for them, they don't
claim that power as their right, they only place limits on it.

> "Key escrow" is an attempt to implement the cyberspatial analog of search.
No, it's not.  Wiretapping, electromagnetic eavesdropping,
and demands for records you were already keeping are search.
Ordering you not to have private conversations without recording them
for the government and not to have locks without giving them the keys
first are the analogs of so-called "key escrow".

> to be worth it.  Note that's a comparison of their money and success rate
> against our privacy; no wonder they got it so wrong.
Well said...


> 
> (4) If you accept points (1) and (2) above, you're left wanting a way to
> implement searches in cyberspace when due process is followed.  
> I hope anarchists won't be the only people opposing changing the 
> balance of power greatly in the government's favor 

As a moderate not-quite-pacifist anarchist, I still understand
people's desire to protect themselves and their property,
though I'm not sure that I agree that revenge after the fact
has a real moral justification, but if it does, then you'd
probably want to hire some police to get your stolen stuff back 
or avenge injuries done to you, or at least detectives to find out
who injured you so you can publish bad reputations about them.
The government aren't always *my* police force of choice,
but I certainly have no intention of imposing my spy service on all
your conversations.

> (by poorly designed key escrow).  What are the rest of us left to answer with?
> Perhaps a much better key escrow design.

"Escrow" is an arrangement between two parties to hire a trusted
third party to keep something for them, typically down payments in contracts.
If you want to escrow keys in conversations between the two of us,
feel free.  If the people who work for the government think
that *they* are one of the parties to my conversations with other people,
when I wasn't talking to them, they're rude and arrogant :-)
If they think they *own* my conversations and can limit them,
it's time to see how the Bill of Rights limitations on "takings"
apply in cyberspace....

> One that integrates the search with the due process in a cryptographically
> strong way; one that can't be subverted by a few people in a few organizations.
> For example, who says an escrowed key must have only two parts?  

The Clipper chip only has one master key per chip; the fact that they
store it in multiple pieces is a political charade designed to
increase its chance of acceptance by focussing on the details.
It certainly wouldn't have been hard to design a chip that really
*did* have two separate master keys input by separate agencies.
Or more.


> And again, remember where we're weighing money against freedom.  
> It may be that we just have to spend more to stay a reasonably free society.  
> Also, it's worth debating just how strong the protections have to be.

Money is part of the issue; the more important part is weighing
restrictions on people's freedom against the benefits of order.
The government has essentially announced that *they* get to do the
weighing and deciding.  And the technical issues are all classified,
thank you :-)  But you can trust the NSA; they're competent professionals.

There really *are* benefits to order, and there are real crimes
that may be less likely to happen if order is imposed on us.

Freedom has risks.  I think they're worth it.  And unlike the folks
who've decided they're in charge of order, I think it's wrong
to make that decision for others, at the cost of their freedom,
which mandatory escrow does.

			Bill
# Bill Stewart  AT&T Global Information Solutions, aka NCR Corp
# 6870 Koll Center Parkway, Pleasanton CA, 94566 Phone 1-510-484-6204 fax-6399
# email bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com billstewart@attmail.com
# ViaCrypt PGP Key IDs 384/C2AFCD 1024/9D6465