[48260] in Cypherpunks
Re: Denning's misleading statements
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Thomas Grant Edwards)
Sat Jan 27 03:52:48 1996
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 1996 03:49:06 -0500 (EST)
From: Thomas Grant Edwards <tedwards@Glue.umd.edu>
To: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: <m0tg2xB-0008zgC@pacifier.com>
On Fri, 26 Jan 1996, jim bell wrote:
> I'm not saying we should somehow try to prevent people from developing truly
> voluntary key-escrow systems; rather, I'm saying that their existence should
> alert us to the danger.
True - and while the administration/FBI and their pawns at NIST (most of
which are ex-NSA) recognize they can't force total key escrow right now,
they are working on a FIPS to ensure that all government software
purchases include government key escrow, to try to tilt the marketplace
towards this idea.
From the various Key Escrow meetings I've gone to, the main people who
said they want voluntary escrow was mainly banking concerns, and they
certainly wanted it in safe hands, not in the hands of the government.
Infact no one from industry was concerned about "immediate key escrow"
for tapping phone lines (except for this crazy guy from IBM). Key escrow
was only seen as useful in terms of data recovery.
-Thomas
