[914] in libertarians
Re: PGP and mail
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kevin THEOBALD)
Sun Apr 23 17:03:57 1995
From: theobald@bluebeard.cs.mcgill.ca (Kevin THEOBALD)
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 1995 17:00:10 -0400
In-Reply-To: Omri Nomiddlename Schwarz's message [Re: PGP and mail] as of Apr 23, 16:11
To: Omri Nomiddlename Schwarz <ocschwar@sub-zero.mit.edu>
Cc: libertarians@MIT.EDU
| But do you have an extension of that analogy for email?
| (the registrar strategy, I mean)
| Currently there is no way of telling wether or not your email is snooped
| on.
No, and signing flaps won't make it *impossible* for the gov to snoop your
snail-mail without detection either. Just harder.
I'm not suggesting this as a serious security method, just as a way of
making a point. Zimmermann's PGP manual asks what would happen if the
government tried to force people to send all their mail on postcards,
since "only criminals" would have a reason to seal it up inside an envelope.
There would be widespread opposition, because people *already* seal their
mail inside envelopes without the automatic assumption that they are hiding
something criminal. But e-mail has traditionally been unsecure, which is
why it is easier for the government to try to keep it that way. Zimmermann
urges everyone to use PGP, even for trivial stuff, because it would
establish the principle that e-mail is PRIVATE. (Another reason: all
encryption methods can be broken, but require more resources. Suppose that
only government opponents (LP? :-) were to use PGP and nobody else bothered.
Then it would be worthwhile for the feds to snoop on the Internet and
capture all PGP-encoded messages, using the NSA's supercomputers to
crack them, because most of the messages would provide worthwhile info.
But this method wouldn't work if there were lots of trivial messages
going around with PGP encoding. The flap-signing idea would apply the
same idea to snail-mail: make it harder for the govt. to figure out what
it really wants to snoop.
BTW, I've heard of automated Internet-snooping programs that look for
keywords and copy, for later manual reading, all files that meet the
heuristic criteria. What would happen if people started lacing all their
messages with random keywords that might attract the snooper programs,
like "PGP"?
Kevin
