[9138] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: If we had key escrow, Scarfo wouldn't be a problem
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bram Cohen)
Wed Aug 15 18:16:59 2001
Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2001 12:06:35 -0700 (PDT)
From: Bram Cohen <bram@gawth.com>
To: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Cc: cryptography@wasabisystems.com
In-Reply-To: <5.0.2.1.0.20010814180132.00a7b760@mail.well.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0108151203520.9431-100000@ultra.gawth.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
On Tue, 14 Aug 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:
> http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55606-2001Aug9.html
> "Encryption is virtually unbreakable by police today, with programs that
> can be bought for $15," said Stewart Baker, former general counsel of the
> National Security Agency and now partner at the Washington law firm Steptoe
> & Johnson. Although agreeing that surveillance should be done under strict
> guidelines, Baker said that "to a degree, the privacy groups got us into
> this by arguing that there should be no limits on encryption, and the
> police have to deal with it."
Even if there were widespread key escrow, Scarfo sure as hell wouldn't
have used it. In fact, even if encryption were still tightly
export-controlled, he'd still have used that. The argument that we should
have more key escrow because of cases like this makes no sense.
-Bram Cohen
"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent"
-- John Maynard Keynes
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