From: Adam Shostack <adam@homeport.org>
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 1996 09:36:15 -0800 (PST)
To: apteryx@super.zippo.com
Subject: "Strong" crypto and export rule changes.
In-Reply-To: <3290d021.3724525@super.zippo.com>
Message-ID: <199611161733.MAA04178@homeport.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


	What the US government will allow to be exported is not "strong
encryption."  It is encryption only slightly too strong to be broken
by an amateur effort.  For the right investment in custom hardware, it
falls quickly.  (500,000 $US = 3.5 hour avg break).

	Contrast this to strong cryptography, which if you spent the
entire US GDP on cracking hardware, you have a chance of breaking it
before the heat death of the universe.  (Of course, thats a smaller
probability than winning the lottery on a single ticket.)

	They're not letting out anything that they couldn't break
years ago.  They're not really improving the competitiveness of
American business.  They may be allowing change in what will be
deployed in the US, but it won't really change becuase of the
paperwork requirements.

	In other words, the surveilance state is still winning, and
American business is still losing.

Adam


| It sure looks like it, the following quotes from CNN's web page:
| 
| http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9611/15/encryption.reut/index.html

| "The technology will make it possible to export products containing
| so-called "strong encryption," which have not been exportable under
| national security laws dating back to the Cold War. "




-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume