From: "Michael C Taylor (CSD)" <mctaylor@olympus.mta.ca>
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 13:07:17 -0800 (PST)
To: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@amaranth.com>
Subject: Re: Is there a Win PGP?
In-Reply-To: <199611071228.GAA22584@mailhub.amaranth.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.OSF.3.90.961107161755.5877A-100000@olympus.mta.ca>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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On Thu, 7 Nov 1996, William H. Geiger III wrote:
> In <1.5.4.32.19961107072438.00dad0cc@popd.ix.netcom.com>, on 11/06/96 at 11:24 PM,
>    stewarts@ix.netcom.com said:
> 
> >For commercial applications,
> >you probably also need ViaCrypt anyway.  It was a nice product before they added Key
> >Escrow support.  Now that Phil has bought them, they'll presumably return to
> >political correctness on that issue.
> 
> Hmmm I don't think they actually had a Key Escrow Support. My understanding was that
> the user could create a master key that could be used to decrypt messages from the
> 
> Does anyone know if you can purchace a commercial license from ViaCrypt/PGP Inc. but
> use the standard PGP for commercial purposes?
>
> William H. Geiger III  http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii

PGP Inc. (http://www.pgp.com/) is now marketing Viacrypt PGP.
 There are two packages, Viacrypt PGP Personal Edition which is PGP, like we 
all know and love. PE also is available as DOS, MS-Windows, Mac, and UNIX. So 
Viacrypt PGP/PE for DOS should feel similar if not identical to MIT's PGP, 
though I haven't tested it yet.
 You could license IDEA single-license and license RSAREF for commerical 
usage (http://www.consensus.com/ or JonathanZ@consensus.com), but why 
bother?
 They also have a Business Edition which supports key escrowing, not some 
US government backdoor, but a 'master key' for businesses to recover 
encrypted information if an employee forgets a passphase (which they do), 
dies (which they do, if the information is very important), is on 
vacation (sometimes it happens), etc.
 In a commerical environment, key escrowing is for data recovery, not for 
spying on employees. If you want to use your employer's email system for 
your personal email, then use a personal public key. 

 -Michael