[9308] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
RE: crypto backdoors = terrorisms free reign
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Caspar Bowden)
Sat Sep 15 17:28:03 2001
From: "Caspar Bowden" <cb@fipr.org>
To: <cryptography@wasabisystems.com>
Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 18:44:25 +0100
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In-reply-to: <B7C81A41.AAD4%mccoy@io.com>
> [mailto:owner-cryptography@wasabisystems.com] On Behalf Of Jim McCoy
...
> nathan@fains.com at nathan@fains.com wrote:
...
> > 1) Weaken the ability of the free world to combat things such as=20
> > terrorism due to the miss-assumption that criminals and terrorists=20
> > will actually obey the law thereby causing lack of=20
> preparedness. You=20
> > only restrict the rights of the law-abiding citizen, not=20
> the lawless.
>=20
> Incorrect. You will weaken the absolute security of many,=20
> but the few who choose to use strong (non-GAK) crypto will be=20
> easily distinguished from those who comply with the rules. =20
I've wondered about this in case of key escrow.
Isn't the only way of telling whether a blob of data is double-encrypted
(once with unauthorised/undeclared key, once with escrowed key), to open
up the blob with the escrowed key and have a look ?=20
Of course the contents could be stegoed, but that appears not to matter
to govts. (in the memorable words of a British official "only criminals
will use stego" - as if that was a refutation.)
So presumably (unless the escrow was a sham) there would have to be some
kind of random-sampling at rate p, so that after N times, probability of
getting caught (1-p)^N would be adjusted to act as sufficient deterrent.
Is anyone aware of any paper written on operational/policy side of this
- I guess it's the sort of thing people wouldn't have been worrying
about for several years.
--
Caspar =
Bowden=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=A0=
=A0=A0=A0 www.fipr.org
Director, Foundation for Information Policy Research
Tel: +44(0)20 7354 2333=20
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