[2208] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: key escrow advocate M&A
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Stewart)
Fri Feb 27 11:37:26 1998
Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 19:20:17 -0800
To: "Donald E. Eastlake 3rd" <dee@cybercash.com>,
"Marcus J. Ranum" <mjr@clark.net>
From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>
Cc: cryptography@c2.net
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.980223183240.19452D-100000@cybercash.com>
At 02:45 PM 2/24/98 -0500, Donald E. Eastlake 3rd wrote:
>But isn't the whole key recover alliance backing away from the government
>and saying they will only push what the market wants, not what Louis
>Freeh wants?
They're saying that because it's the politically correct thing to say
at this point in time, not because they do or don't believe it.
The market wants whatever it can be talked into wanting,
either because of inherent business needs, or FBI pressure,
or government contracting requirements. If they augment the
Drug-Free-Workplace section in nearly every government contract
with a Key-Freeh-Workplace section, then the Key Grabbing Technology
sellers get to sell lots of software and have major hooks into the
market for crypto technology, just as Verisign has major hooks
into the Certification Authority market that will outlast the
RSA patent.
>> 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 don't have high hopes for this.
There have been four big pushers of Key Grabbing:
- The FBI, who want to wiretap everybody
- The NSA, who want to control crypto and wiretap everybody else
- Dorothy Denning, the only major semi-independent pro-escrow person
- TIS, the big industry pusher of Software Key Escrow technologies.
The potentially-good side is what fraction of TIS really cares about
Key Grabbing as opposed to firewalls and other security business;
I don't know, but perhaps the Key Grabbers will end up more diluted
by this whole thing and focus their efforts on socially valuable
technology instead, like trying to take over the firewall market.
On the potentially-bad side, you could end up with VPN firewalls everywhere
that escrow keys...
Thanks!
Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
