From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 12:19:46 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: "Macintosh -- the Surveillance System for the Rest of Us
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9610031350.A13226-0100000@netcom14>
Message-ID: <v03007801ae79f27cb8c3@[206.119.69.46]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 7:13 pm -0400 10/3/96, Timothy C. May wrote:
> GAK, or Girlfriend's Access to Keys, is indeed a very scary thing.

Ah.  Maybe we should cross-post this to alt.tasteless?

> "Macintosh, the Surveillance System for the Rest of Us."
>
> (Why Apple would go along with this, while Microsoft and Netscape are
> apparently not playing ball, is incomprehensible to me. Apple risks
> alienating its remaining core user base, who often characterize Microsoft
> as "the Borg." So, Apple capitulates, while MS does not. I guess the
> "Macintosh Crypto Forum" didn't do a lot of good, did it?)

Ouch.

My first reaction to the above was to say, "Oh, Yeah??? Well, you're ugly,
buddy, and your mother dresses you funny, too!" But, I won't upset the
decorum of so august a forum with such eggregious classlessness. Not here
on cypherpunks. :-).


If one were to be completely uncharitable in the interpretation of Tim's
most recent outbreak of vitriol here, it would seem that he's offended that
he wasn't asked first to be the keynote at MacCrypto, the conference a
bunch of us had at Apple a month ago, which, I might add, was a
considerable success.

Of course, the real irony here is that Tim *was* the first person we asked
to keynote. The irony compounds itself slightly more when you consider the
*last* person who we asked, Phil Zimmermann, at the *last* possible minute,
graciously accepted our invitation and delivered his keynote speech to a
very enthusiastic crowd.

Unfortunately, it may be a speaking engagement Phil regrets now, in light
of Apple's apparent participation in the most recent Washington GAK-fest.
:-{.


Anyway, let us *be* charitable, and take Tim's apparent vituperation about
Apple's complete capitulation to government pressure, not to mention the
appalling failure of the MacCrypto conference to lob any clues over the
walls of Fortress Apple, entirely at their face value, shall we?

Let's assume that he really *wasn't* trying to rattle the bars on the Mac
crypto community's collective cage, and that he actually was trying to
contribute something constructive to what appears to be a *truly* apalling
situation to anyone who wants strong crypto, and thus internet commerce, to
be transparent and easy to do on the Macintosh. The Mac crypto community's
cage is plenty rattled by the recent news from Washington, as it is.


With that in mind, the best thing most of us can figure is that Ellen
Hancock, Apple's chief technology officer, freshly hired from IBM, is in
the process of pulling the same kind of crypto-boner for Apple that
Netscape's CEO did last year about this time. Frankly, people who run
industrial organizations like Apple, and, I might add, Microsoft, don't
really understand yet that internet commerce *is* financial cryptography,
and, of course, that means strong, and un-GAKked, crypto.

I'm sure that the people on the mac-crypto list and the rest of the Mac
internet community in general will disabuse her of this notion rather
quickly.


By the way, most of the hard core of 70 or so people who came to the
MacCrypto conference, those who sat through the whole thing from start to
finish, were from outside Apple. Clearly, as far as crypto on the Mac goes,
the word "evangelism" cuts both ways.

However, we got some very good stuff from the Apple folks who did come,
including a soon to be released entropy manager -- with public source code
-- and a public-key "keychain" project -- with public source code -- , and
a volunteer of development participation in serious crypto projects from an
Apple fellow (who, by definition, can do anything he wants) and his staff.


Frankly, I'd rather see actual code being written than press releases,
wouldn't you, Tim?

Even if the code isn't on an Intel Pentium Pro 200 using the Microsoft
CryptoAPI...

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga



-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com)
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"'Bart Bucks' are not legal tender."
                -- Punishment, 100 times on a chalkboard,
                       for Bart Simpson
The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/