[1041] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: (Fwd) New crypto bill clears committee
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael Brennen)
Fri Jun 20 14:38:11 1997
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 1997 12:42:45 -0500 (CDT)
From: Michael Brennen <mbrennen@fni.com>
To: cryptography@c2.net
In-Reply-To: <v03007800afd062b8ede2@[172.17.1.61]>
On Fri, 20 Jun 1997, Rick Smith wrote:
> I think the primary issue is that key escrow will make electronic commerce
> more expensive to try out and deploy. It's going to make *all* crypto
> devices more expensive. ANY mandatory feature in a product makes the
> ....
> E-commerce will only make it if you can keep the price per transaction
> really low. If the crypto portion of the product is more expensive (to pay
As much as this is true, I fear this kind of argument won't stand up in
the political realities of the popular media. The sad thing is that there
may be no way get people to hear that the McCain/Kerrey bill is bogus for
the purposes it was passed. Requiring key escrow so kids won't see porn
is a complete non sequitor. If it is strongly encrypted, they won't see
it anyway.
I'm not sure that the general public wants to hear the real issues laid
out. They certainly haven't on issues like the federal debt, a monster
approaching silently from our blind sides. Hey, sure, we need to do
something about pork -- so shut down *their* program (and keep your cotton
pickin' fingers off of mine...). I want to hope I'm wrong on this.
Now if the public figures out that *their* financial data is subject to
silent scrutiny, they might get upset enough to yell about key escrow.
-- Michael
