[1622] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Legislation is useless
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steve Schear)
Thu Sep 25 10:02:41 1997
In-Reply-To: <t53en6fevua.fsf@rover.cygnus.com>
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 1997 16:21:39 -0700
To: Marc Horowitz <marc@cygnus.com>, perry@piermont.com
From: Steve Schear <azur@netcom.com>
Cc: cryptography@c2.net
The cellular phone vendors
>and service providers have had a billion-dollar-a-year incentive to
>deploy strong crypto, yet they haven't. Why is this? Not for
>technical reasons.
There's obviously a legal/political component. If I were a manufacture I'd
be very weary of 'tickling the dragon's tail.' On the other hand,
engineers in these companies with a libertarian bent would want to wait
till as many of their phones which could easily accomodate crypto were
deployed (making recall and control all but impossible) before leaking the
firmware/hardware changes.
>
>For crypto to be deployed successfully, it needs to be universally
>interoperable.
Yes, but there a several working crypto phones, including PGPFone and Eric
Blossom's bump in the cord. The PGPFone SW could certainly serve as the
template for such a standard, I'm not sure about Eric's product.
Perry, as an IETF working group chair, you know what a
>daunting task that is. It can't be done without the vendors.
I don't agree. One of the primary pacing items is the availability of
TCP/IP packet data via the digital cellular networks with the required
speed and latency characteristics. Another is a subscriber instrument
high-speed data or PC card port. I'm not sure how many of the phones which
support voice and data can be modified through firmware changes alone to
handle the crypto.
--Steve
