From: Raul Deluth Miller <rockwell@nova.umd.edu>
Date: Mon, 9 Jan 95 18:25:54 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: data havens
Message-ID: <199501100225.VAA08907@nova.umd.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


The problem with encryption, in general, is that it's an attempt to
hide information -- unless the information is trivial, encryption is
only a temporary measure.

Believe it or not, the government (or, more properly, people
associated with the government) is still trying to figure out which
industries are Iraqi owned -- one technique being brought to bear is
statistical analysis of company activities, with special attention to
changes which occurred during the gulf war.

The only way to have data havens be acceptable to the U.S. government
would be to have them become acceptable to the U.S. population (or
some significant fraction of them).  This would imply phasing out the
DEA and the IRS, at a minimum.  [Newspaper article this weekend: how
it's so horrible that some people deal in cash and thus are evading
the IRS.]

More generally, the way to keep a data haven from being located is to
make sure it doesn't have a location...  This is hard to do without
severely impacting latency.

-- 
Raul D. Miller          N=:((*/pq)&|)@                 NB. public e, y, n=:*/pq
<rockwell@nova.umd.edu> P=:*N/@:#               NB. */-.,e e.&factors t=:*/<:pq
                        1=t|e*d    NB. (,-:<:)pq is four large primes, e medium
x-:d P,:y=:e P,:x                  NB. (d P,:y)-:D P*:N^:(i.#D)y [. D=:|.@#.d