From: Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 95 07:35:26 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: GAK/weak crypto rationale?
Message-ID: <199509131434.HAA09918@jobe.shell.portal.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Responding to msg by futplex@pseudonym.com (Futplex) on Wed, 13 
Sep  2:11 AM

>Your paraphrase of Nelson's statement strikes me as 
>remarkable. Doesn't "we  are not concerned with bad 
>people using crypto among themselves" run  completely 
>counter to all the hyperbole about terrorists planning 
>OKC II  with PGP ?  Does anyone have an exact quotation 
>?  At any rate, sign me up as  a "bad person"....

I think this is setting up the rationale for software key escrow.  One of
the big loopholes in this idea has always been that it would be easy for
bad guys to superencrypt or otherwise bypass the legal encryption.  The
response has been that the systems will be designed so that compliant
systems will not interoperate with rogue systems.  And the counter-response
to that was that criminals (and privacy advocates) would use software
which would operate compliantly with conventional programs and maintain
privacy when talking to other rogue programs.

This new line will be used to respond to this argument, I think.  Even if
it is admitted that there is no way for the government to be able to tell
what the criminals say amongst themselves, it will still be useful to be
able to tell what they say to other people.  Therefore software key
escrow will be argued to still be useful even though it can be defeated.

Hal