[2357] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Rivest's Wheat & Chaff - A crypto alternative
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Stewart)
Wed Mar 25 09:49:32 1998
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 09:15:34 -0800
To: cryptography@c2.net
From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>
In-Reply-To: <199803231911.OAA17117@jekyll.piermont.com>
Marc Horowitz writes:
>> Ron's chaffing technique is technically interesting, but I don't think
>> it's the Answer. What is to prevent the BXA from declaring that
>> chaffing software is an EI, and therefore export controlled?
The Answer is to get cryptography too widely deployed to stop,
and to increase public acceptance to the level that the public
thinks cryptography is for _them_ rather than for spies and paranerds,
and to increase business dependence on encryption to the point
that interfering with it has too much political cost.
Rivest's technique is interesting politically, because while the
legal justification for banning crypto was always shaky at best,
the legal justification for banning strong authentication is
outright non-existent, especially since it gives the government
the power of forgery. Even if the Fourth Amendment guarantees
of security of your papers can be overridden by a search/seizure warrant,
that's not justification for preventing you from securing them at first.
Since this method uses only authentication, not cryptography,
it falls on the "unregulated and exportable without permits"
side of the already fuzzy current export regulations -
and any attempt to ban it suddenly becomes a hairy technical issue.
I'm sure they'll try to do something, but as Janet Reno says,
probably not for at least 60 days...
Thanks!
Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
