[10345] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: comments on CLIPPER
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert G. Moskowitz)
Sat Feb 19 03:05:54 1994
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 94 12:31 EST
From: "Robert G. Moskowitz" <0003858921@mcimail.com>
To: Miles R Fidelman <fidelman@civicnet.org>
To: com priv <com-priv@psi.com>
>-- with CLIPPER and legal alternatives, the government will be using its
>standard setting role to push an unpopular system, the various
>alternatives will all be proprietary, so again we probably won't get any
>real interoperability (though the track record of tcp/ip despite the
>governments push toward OSI provides a counterexample)
X.509, as I said in my letter, addresses all of the points you made when
applied to EMail. From everything I have heard, the government is treaty
obligated (GATT) to allow for the use of X.509 in messaging. As much as I
wonder if X.509 will fly compared to PEM, if this is what it takes to have a
legal alternative to break the back of the government, so be it.
Will the government stop BBN from selling their TEMPEST rated X.509
certificate generator? Or is this already dead? I saw considerable info on
this over a year ago. Will RSA be stopped from excepting royalties for the
use of Public Key cryptography for messaging or any other application that
it is used for in the US?
In otherwords, there are legal alternatives. It would be interesting if the
US government were to exclude X.509 from the US GOSIP.
>leading to the question: what, if anything would CLIPPER really
>accomplish?
The CLIPPER would secure only public lines that carry lots of peoples data.
Maybe also for cellular phones...
Bob Moskowitz
Speaking for myself.
