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Re: the return of key escrow?

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Peter Gutmann)
Thu Feb 16 09:57:00 2006

X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
X-Original-To: cryptography@metzdowd.com
From: pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz (Peter Gutmann)
To: cryptography@metzdowd.com, smb@cs.columbia.edu
In-Reply-To: <20060215155246.01F003C028E@berkshire.machshav.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 18:54:21 +1300

"Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu> writes:

>According to the BBC, the British government is talking to Microsoft about
>putting in a back door for the file encryption mechanisms.

That's one way of looking at it.  It's not really a backdoor, it's a way of
spiking DRM.  If the UK government can be scared into requiring that Windows
Vista not be fully DRM-enabled (by whatever means necessary), then that's a
good thing.  Waving the four horsemen at them is a good way of achieving this
- the horsemen have been used for years to justify restrictive computer laws,
now (for once) they're being used to try and combat restrictions.  So we
hould be supporting this, not condemning it.  Maybe someone with a
congresscritters ear in the US could get the same thing adopted over there.
The horsemen are bigger than Hollywood.

Peter.

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