From: Michael C Taylor <mctaylor@mta.ca>
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 04:46:25 +0800
To: amp@pobox.com
Subject: Re: Jim Bell reference
In-Reply-To: <Chameleon.868552644.amp@ampugh.mcit.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.970710163137.21206K-100000@fractal.mta.ca>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



On Thu, 10 Jul 1997 amp@pobox.com wrote:
> 
> Gee, suprise, suprise. D.Denning is behind anti-encryption (anti
> liberty) propaganda.
> 
> If you search the net for writings or speeches by Denning, and any
> government reports about encryption,, you will find that she is the
> source of most anti-encryption propaganda in the u.s..

Most of her academic research was before she became involved in government
policies. Since she is now in a position of trust with the government she
could be the cypherpunks friend rather than foe. It appears that the paper
on key recovery  penned by various well-respected 'cypherpunks' like
Blaze, Neumann, Rivest, Schiller, and Schneier (not everyone I know) has
indeed had an effect on her. 

The one major difference in Dr. Denning's point of view is that she has a
large degree of trust in LEA. Period. That is the difference
between Dr. Denning and the average cypherpunk. 

Denning believes that encryption will hinder law enforcement. It will, it
may already. The difference is that she 'sees' a way to prevent that while
maintaining privacy of the indiviual (from other indiviuals). This is true
and if the infrastructure could be built it, would work to a
limited degree. 

The evidence is weak, in an article from May of this year, Denning quotes
500 cases world-wide, but neglects to follow-up with which of these cases
were solved regardless; due to other evidence or because the suspect was
using crummy crypto. 

Denning doesn't seem too concern with lawless government access, access
beyond the scope, government tampering or forgery of information which are
possible with poor key escrow technologies.

Denning talks of unnamed test projects, she thinks finanical businesses do
deserve to be special under export regulations (or knows that they would
lean on the regulations to remove them), and knows enough about people to
know that there is no need to mandate 'key recovery,' businesses want to
buy into it.

At least Denning does not recomment domestic restrictions (she'd be out of
a job if so) and is willing to admit to a change of heart. 

Anyway everyone knows that celluar phones catch more criminals than any
other law enforcement tool (like hard work).

--
Michael C. Taylor <mctaylor@mta.ca> <http://www.mta.ca/~mctaylor/>
Legalize mathematics