From: "David E. Smith" <dsmith@midwest.net>
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 95 11:03:24 PST
To: SBinkley@atitech.ca (Scott Binkley)
Subject: Re: GAK
Message-ID: <199512061921.NAA00175@cdale1.midwest.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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At 11:56 AM 12/6/95 EST, SBinkley@atitech.ca wrote:

>I heard a while back about being able to "split" up a PGP key.
I suppose you could, with some variant of Shamir's secret-
sharing scheme.  I'm not familiar with any specific
applications that do this.  (But that's irrelevant.)

>What about splitting up the key into many parts, and giving
>them out to multiple INDEPENDANT agencies.  ie: One piece
>goes to the FBI, one to the NSA, one to some other committee,
>and so on.  That way, no goverment body could just tap your
>conversations without getting approval from others, and
>gaining the pieces of your key.
That still doesn't address the basic issue - that the government
has NO RIGHT to access our _private_ keys.  If you want to
assume a fairly paranoid threat model, each of these different
agencies will instantly combine their parts to generate the
whole key.  If you trust the government, it might work.
Personally, I trust the government about as far as I can
throw the typical Man In Black.

Dave
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----- David E. Smith, c/o Southeast Missouri State University
1210 Towers South, Cape Girardeau MO USA 63701-4745
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