From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
Date: Sat, 4 Nov 1995 12:09:50 +0800
To: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
Subject: Re: video as a source of public randomness
In-Reply-To: <acbf9287090210045bcb@[205.199.118.202]>
Message-ID: <199511031747.MAA00192@jekyll.piermont.com>
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[I understand that this isn't your suggestion...]

Timothy C. May writes:
> I was commenting on the sources of randomness, such as atmospheric RF
> variations, antenna configuration, tuner sensitivity, amplifier noise,
> etc., that would make prediction of snow bits very difficult.

I feel leery about these things if only because, as I've noted, trying
to get these things "just right" and make sure that you are getting
noise and not, say, high frequency hum from your own switching power
supply, is very hard. You can set up a geiger counter if you are
merely moderately competant. I don't know who I would trust to do
analog stuff "just right". Do things a little wrong, and you merely
have a huge search space and not an impossibly huge one -- the sort of
toehold cryptanalysts want.

> I have no brief with any of the proposed schemes: nearly any are better
> than what we have now, if widely deployed and suitable used.

Agreed.

Perry