[1523] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Access to Plaintext: An Obvious Consequence
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David HM Spector)
Thu Sep 18 10:55:07 1997
To: Phil Karn <karn@qualcomm.com>
cc: rah@shipwright.com, cryptography@c2.net
In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 16 Sep 1997 22:06:12 PDT."
<m0xBCJY-000HQDC@laptop.ka9q.ampr.org>
Date: Thu, 18 Sep 1997 00:37:08 -0400
From: David HM Spector <spector@zeitgeist.com>
(*sigh*)
Well it gets a lot more interesting that just the issues of source
code construction. In order to make this work one really has to
control the ability of peple to COMPILE code (as well ban the use of
unauthorized file/data formats. To paraphrase Ron Rivest: "Register
those emoticons!").
All this could lead to the Congress ultimately attempting to license
programmers and impound compilers and other software tools. It's only
a small logical step (if any of what these twits are attempting can be
called "logical") after the Therac25, y2k, etc. There would be, of
course plenty of precedent to attempt to legislate software
construction -- after all we license doctors, lawyers, architects,
pilots, etc. -- but there is that inconvenient free-speech thing.
The fallout from restricting all that American innovation and creative
thinking would do wonders for the economy I bet.
But then they would also have to license/track common ICs in Radio
shack... after all, one could build some pretty serious encoders out
of a UART, a EEPROM and a DSP, no...? In a pinch your car's
flight-control computer would make a good real-time system -- its got
a fast MC88000-type (or the equivilent) CPU & lots of i/o ports....
A simple way around all of this would be, of course, to implement
Vernor Vinge's "LEA" (Law Enforcement Area) on every chip [He
theorized it at a recent CFP as a "here's a scary future" idea] with
some clever little expert system that looks for encryption like
functions and reports you to the nearest law-enforcement node.
Hmmm... here's a cheery thought: We could be the first post-modern
agrarian society.
...*sigh*...
73,
David
--
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David HM Spector spector@zeitgeist.com
Network Design & Infrastructure Security voice: +1 212.580.7193
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