[2164] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: key escrow advocate M&A
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Adam Back)
Mon Feb 23 20:48:05 1998
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 00:32:56 GMT
From: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
To: mjr@clark.net
Cc: cryptography@c2.net
Cc: cme@acm.org
In-reply-to: <199802232221.RAA12926@shell.clark.net> (mjr@clark.net)
Marcus Ranum <mjr@clark.net> writes on cryptography:
> It'll be interesting to see if Network Associates' merger with
> TIS results in a de-commitment from TIS' key escrow focus.
> I gather that they backed away from it following their purchase
> of PGP, Inc. Maybe the "new TIS" will drop RecoverKey. We can
> hope.
I already fired off this question to PRZ and Jon Callas (no answer
yet). There are a number of issues, one of them is that TIS is much
larger than PGP was when they were acquired (PGP were bought for $36M,
TIS proposal: $300M). If there are many more TIS employees, perhaps
even TIS personnel will displace some more of the remaining original
PGP Inc personnel.
The other question is how much influence PRZ retains in NA, and even
in the Total Network Security Division (which is PGP Inc's current
name since the PGP Inc buy out), and how much influence the remaining
pro-privacy original PGP employees now working in Total Network
Security division have.
For TIS to pull out of KRAP would be a pretty neat trend ("the
shinking list of the US governments GAK sell out companies at
www.kra.org"). But I'm not sure how feasible that would be, as I
thought TIS was pretty deeply into GAK as a business model, ie perhaps
a lot of their revenue is through deals swung with governments as a
result of pro GAK stance.
There are also perhaps some negative things which could result, say
that PGP's anti GAK stance could be eroded, or that some of TIS's
"RecoverKey" technology might find it's way into future PGP versions.
Perhaps Carl Ellison as the (now repentant, he quit TIS) designer of
some of TIS's key recovery stuff might have some insights into the
applicability of RecoverKey if it is the same stuff.
The press release which can be found easily from pgp's home page
(www.pgp.com follow headline link "important announcement...")
suggests that NA are pleased to acquire this technology or some other
marketing type statement. The PGP Inc division's page interestingly
seems to be trying to add some opposite spin from the main NA pages
they are linking to.
Adam
