From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 19:06:09 -0700 (PDT)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: No Subject
Message-ID: <199808040206.EAA31716@replay.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> 	Actually, Hamre said that US companies have no Gawd-Given Right to
> _export_ strong crypto. See:
> http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/14098.html

Oh, it's sick anyhow...

A couple excerpts from jya's transcript:

On the EFF DES cracker: Now, I need to explain first of all, that the
government is currently permitting the export of 56 bit encryption
algorithms.  Now, I know that there's some huffing and puffing about
whether that's strong encryption or not. But again, I say let's put this
in context.  There was a flap here the other day when, ta-da, somebody
invented a computer that could break 56 bit encryption in 30 hours or 40
hours or whatever the time was, right.  You took 40 hours to decrypt a
two-second message.  And it was good only for that one message.  You've
got to start all over again on the next two-second message.  Tell me that
that isn't strong encryption.

[Secretary Hamre, that isn't strong encryption. Weak enough that cracking
DES keys for two grand each -- reasonable price considering some of the
applications using DES -- can be a viable business for the shady hacker
type, in fact. Pays for your parts in ten months, pocket most everything
else until the machine breaks.]


On export controls: "...I'd also ask American business not to make a
campaign out of just trying to bust through export controls as though
somehow there was a God-given, inherent right to send the strongest
encryption to anybody in the world, no matter who they are.  I don't agree
with that.  I will never agree with that."

["I will never agree with that" -- I'd say we're talking to an open-minded
individual who's really trying to work things out, eh?]

> 
> 	Which, despite all the damage control and spin waves that followed
> the initial report in WiRed, does not mean that the NSA and DoD believe
> that anyone has been granted some privilege to speak in confidence that
> they, being reverent and religious fellows, should and must respect.
> 
> 	Much ado about nothing, here!
> 
> 	The first (perhaps literally erroneous) WiRed News report -- that
> senior DoD officials do not believe that any two people anywhere in the
> world have a perfect and unassailable right to speak in confidence and
> secrecy -- was spot on accurate and true.
> 
> 
> -----
> "Cryptography is like literacy in the Dark Ages. Infinitely potent, for
> good and ill... yet basically an intellectual construct, an idea, which by
> its nature will resist efforts to restrict it to bureaucrats and others who
> deem only themselves worthy of such Privilege."
> _ A Thinking man's Creed for Crypto _vbm.
> 
>  *     Vin McLellan + The Privacy Guild + <vin@shore.net>    *
>       53 Nichols St., Chelsea, MA 02150 USA <617> 884-5548