[1577] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
RE: Crypto Keys as Spam
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brown, R Ken)
Tue Sep 23 11:29:28 1997
From: "Brown, R Ken" <brownrk1@texaco.com>
To: "'Charles Platt'" <cp@panix.com>,
"'cryptography@c2.net'"
<cryptography@c2.net>
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 1997 10:24:41 -0500
I don't think even that would be needed. There might be plenty of
"legitimate" (in the eyes of the police) reasons for any individual to
have many keys. Maybe I'll want one for my email with you, another one
for work, another one for private files on my home PC, another one for
*really* private files (like those embarrasingly bad novels I started
but never finished) There will be even more when/if crypto starts
appearing in off-the-shelf embedded applications. One day your
carburettor might talk to your fuel tank with crypto. Or your phone
talk to your oven, or your CCD camera to your VCR. If every
middle-class household has a few dozen keys (most probably unknown to
the users) any registration or licensing will either have to be both
automatic and free or it won't get done at all.
Ken Brown
>Charles Platt [SMTP:cp@panix.com] wrote:
>
>If we do suffer a federal law that mandates key escrow and survives
>constitutional tests, would it be possible to screw the system by
>generating huge numbers of crypto keys for federal storage? Imagine,
>say, 100,000 people each contributing a million different keys to the
>federal registry.
>
>This kind of civil disobedience would be impractical, of course, if a
>filing fee were charged for receipt and registration of each key. Still,
>other forms of disobedience (already developed in anti-spam-site
>offensives) suggest themselves if keys are to be transmitted to a federal
>registry via the net.
>
>Overall, I find it hard to see how key escrow would be practical on a very
>large scale, for reasons such as these. After all, InterNIC has trouble
>merely managing email addresses.
>
>--CP
