From: Mok-Kong Shen <mok-kong.shen@stud.uni-muenchen.de>
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 18:10:56 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Use encryption to foil spooks' data harvesting, says US state dept
In-Reply-To: <199810141617.SAA07987@replay.com>
Message-ID: <3625CC35.6635727C@stud.uni-muenchen.de>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Anonymous wrote:
> 
> http://ds.state.gov/documents/protect.doc

> Many telecommunications transmissions will contain "key words", used to
> identify information of interest to a third party.  A key word can be the
> name of a technology, product, project, or anything else which may identify
> the subject of the transmission.

The communications of criminals are certainly not billions bytes
long but rather short and if they use 'key words' these can hardly 
be detected. This shows the nonsense of prohibiting use (or restricting
export) of strong crypto by the general public and also the total
ineffectivity of wiretapping etc. by the authority.

A tiny history: During WWII there was a time when much commodities
were smuggled between Hongkong and Macao. Letters were subject
to opening by the Japanese occupation. Using 'key words' the 
smugglers of one city put little harmless looking announces in 
local newspapers which the complices at the other city could read 
the next day just as fast as if the information were sent via the post.

This clearly shows that those attempting to push through crypto
laws or regulations have either very low IQ or have high IQ but are
in fact pursuing other (undisclosed) goals than what they publically 
claim (fighting criminality etc.).

M. K. Shen