[3061] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: practical encryption
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mike Rosing)
Fri Jul 24 02:00:54 1998
Date: Thu, 23 Jul 1998 12:54:31 -0500 (CDT)
From: Mike Rosing <cryptech@Mcs.Net>
To: cryptography@c2.net
In-Reply-To: <35B74BB8.2A9561B8@stud.uni-muenchen.de>
On Thu, 23 Jul 1998, Mok-Kong Shen wrote:
> Nelson Minar wrote:
> >
>
> > I think the single most important use of crypto facing us now is
> > IPSEC. It gives the Internet authentication and encryption. We should
> > design the protocols to be strong, yes. We should raise hell about 40
> > bit limits, and develop the crypto in a free country so everyone has
> > access to the strong system. But we can't lose sight of the more
> > fundamental message, that we need the cryptography.
> >
> > Or is this horribly naive?
>
> Time seems to be the critical issue. The cardinality of the set of
> free countries is monotone decreasing.
Everyone does have access to strong crypto. In some places you
risk your life using it, but the chances are you are already risking
your life doing something else so that's why you need it.
I think the majority of people are perfectly happy to be slaves. We
as cryptographers have to make their use of crypto so easy they don't
even know it's there. People can go on blissfully unaware that their
communications really are secure, just like they go on now blissfully
unaware that their communications are really *unsecure*. It is
naive to think that people will worry about this.
We must do our best to educate people as best we can, but our best
skills are in programming. so let's give people really easy to use
crypto, so easy they don't know it's there. It won't be perfect,
but it would certainly be better than the nothing that's in place
now!
Patience, persistence, truth,
Dr. mike
