[3145] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Top Pentagon official declares no one has a right to
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kawika Daguio)
Wed Aug 5 13:57:21 1998
Date: Wed, 05 Aug 1998 13:19:22 -0400
From: "Kawika Daguio" <KDAGUIO@aba.com>
To: cryptography@c2.net, meredith@mot.com, reinhold@world.std.com
The governments's goal is to deny access to the mainstream networked =
economy unless one plays ball according to "the rules." The strategy they =
are following is a pretty good one and the UnderSecretary is dead on on =
the practical issues.
While bad guys may be able to talk to each other, they may make bad =
technology choices, stand out because of the nonstandard nature of their =
security methods, or not be able to conduct secure communications without =
prearrangements. Any of these things happening may lead to wins (perhaps =
small) for the good guys.
the above are only my views - please do not attribute them to my employer
...kawika daguio...
>>> "Arnold G. Reinhold" <reinhold@world.std.com> 08/05/98 11:26AM >>>
At 7:34 PM +0100 8/4/98, Andrew Meredith wrote:
>Deputy Secretary of Defense John J. Hamre said:
...
>> You know, it's creating the infrastructure for a security
>> environment that that encryption rides on.
>
>What does this actually mean?
>
>You got email ? .. you got PGP ? .. you got strong crypto! If it really
>is strong crypto you can send it over anything you like. You can laser
>write it on the moon for that matter !
>
>> That turns out to be much more demanding than you think.
>
>I might think that if I knew what he meant :)
>
I think what Hambre and FBI Director Freeh really fear is universal strong
encryption, where almost everyone's e-mail and even phone calls are
strongly encrypted just because they have Windows 2002 installed. Doing
that requires a public key infrastructure and that is not so easy to =
build.
So they feel they still have time to influence how it is designed.
>> you just can't set up PGP between you and somebody else.
Without some special effort. But I don't think Hambre understands just how
easy it is, especially for bad guys, who have always been sensitive to
issues of establishing trust.
>> And if you do, it's a good thing to look at.
I think he means that they can get valuable intellegence just from the =
fact
that two people are exchanging encrypted messages. Since so few people
encrypt now, they can afford to scrutinize those that do.
Arnold Reinhold
Got crypto? http://ciphersaber.gurus.com=20
