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Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!

1997-10-22 - Re: puff pieces vs tough crypto issues (Re: Singapore TOILETALERT)

Header Data

From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
To: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
Message Hash: 2a59d4f88d4268330f0de5aa28d53f2e0ad48fdc20ad2493db2e75fefa72c135
Message ID: <v03007808b073c711fcb1@[204.254.22.221]>
Reply To: <v03007804b073ab366f27@[204.254.22.221]>
UTC Datetime: 1997-10-22 16:31:37 UTC
Raw Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 00:31:37 +0800

Raw message

From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 00:31:37 +0800
To: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: puff pieces vs tough crypto issues (Re: Singapore TOILETALERT)
In-Reply-To: <v03007804b073ab366f27@[204.254.22.221]>
Message-ID: <v03007808b073c711fcb1@[204.254.22.221]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Adam,

Sometimes it's useful to inject a bit of humor in every serious discussion.

The relevance? Another example of Singapore's loony politics. Strict social
controls and relative economic freedom. I find it fascinating in light of
Net-filtering and other attempts at restricting information flow; if you
don't, well, you can always delete it. :)

As for CMR... I was travelling when the discussion started on cypherpunks
so I haven't been following it very closely.

My position is something along these lines: corporations have a right to go
down the CMR path; it is unwise to restrict them through the coercive power
of the state. At the same time, we need to speak out against crypto-foolish
practices. If corporations start building CMR products, the political
consequences could be devestating. It's like building a gallows for your
own hanging.

>From my perch in Washington, I see PGP 5.5/CMR as an existence proof that
key recovery can be done. So far the crypto-advocates have been able to
wave around the Blaze et al white paper that says we don't know how to do
it. Even Dorothy Denning agreed. But now when a mandatory GAK bill goes to
the House floor, all Rep. Solomon etc. have to do is wave around a
shrinkwrapped copy of PGP and say: "I bought this for $19 at the Egghead
shop at 21st and L." Details will be lost in the fearmongering.

I suspect that there's not that substantial a market for CMR. The apparent
market demand now is an artificial one created by the Clinton
administration.

-Declan

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