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1997-07-19 - Re: Keepers of the keys

Header Data

From: Carl Ellison <cme@cybercash.com>
To: Joe Shea <joeshea@netcom.com>
Message Hash: be2f8161f673d99e5579b0d29458d8decc1c10c75a4291a525d90d840620d451
Message ID: <3.0.3.32.19970719152832.00be2420@cybercash.com>
Reply To: <v0310280caff5e51517f8@[207.167.93.63]>
UTC Datetime: 1997-07-19 19:47:04 UTC
Raw Date: Sun, 20 Jul 1997 03:47:04 +0800

Raw message

From: Carl Ellison <cme@cybercash.com>
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 1997 03:47:04 +0800
To: Joe Shea <joeshea@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Keepers of the keys
In-Reply-To: <v0310280caff5e51517f8@[207.167.93.63]>
Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.19970719152832.00be2420@cybercash.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



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At 09:15 PM 7/18/97 -0700, Joe Shea wrote:
>Judges -- people like the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals -- 
>would look rather askance at requests for someone's key when it was no
>more aggravating an issue than a piece of flame mail.  On the other hand, 
>if someone's going to blow up San Francisco this week, it sure would help
>to have a key to any encrypted communications he was generating.

The gov't doesn't give any KE agent, judge or otherwise, permission to see the 
actual decrypted traffic to make sure it matches the excuse given on the 
request for access.  The gov't can always come back and say, "Well, he didn't 
say anything useful so we didn't record anything -- thanks for the key anyway."

If the gov't had to get content itself from a judge -- or, better, from the 
NYTimes, Wash Post, ACLU, etc. -- then maybe we'd be closer to a politically 
workable answer.  That is, it would be valueless as a covert intelligence tool.

 - Carl

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+------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Carl M. Ellison       cme@acm.org    http://www.clark.net/pub/cme |
|    PGP: 61 E2 DE 7F CB 9D 79 84   E9 C8 04 8B A6 32 21 A2        |
+-Officer, officer, arrest that man. He's whistling a dirty song.--+

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