[3908] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Ruthless.com
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eric Murray)
Tue Jan 5 12:15:34 1999
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1999 09:04:36 -0800
From: Eric Murray <ericm@lne.com>
To: "Lance J. Hoffman" <hoffman@SEAS.GWU.EDU>
Cc: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>,
cypherpunks <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net>, cryptography@c2.net
In-Reply-To: <3.0.3.32.19990105104140.0076d588@mail.seas.gwu.edu>; from Lance J. Hoffman on Tue, Jan 05, 1999 at 10:41:40AM -0500
On Tue, Jan 05, 1999 at 10:41:40AM -0500, Lance J. Hoffman wrote:
> I listened to "ruthless.com" on tape, but have not read the *paper* book.
> I think the tape was abridged. I was actually considering using the book
> in an information warfare class I am teaching this spring. Clancy weaves a
> great yarn; however, the spectacle of a physical assault on a key escrow
> center in California (as if the keys *there* would be stored in the clear)
> and a number of other loose threads convinced me that my students could
> (and have) written better scenarios/games themselves.
>
> Robert Hettinga writes:
>
> >With a back cover like that, it'll probably be a jingo-statist diatribe and
> >Clipper apologia good enough to make even Dorothy Denning blow coffee out her
> >nose, laughing so hard...
>
> It is, but you can expect that from Clancy. The book gets an A for writing
> but a D for content.
I'd give it a C for writing and an F for content.
It was pretty mediocre.
I picked it up as an impluse buy in the supermarket and saved it
for east-west airplane reading. I always seem to fly back to the west
coast after a full day of meetings, so I'm not up for reading
anything difficult in those flights.
First off, it's not written by Clancy, it's written by some other guy
under the Clancy 'label'. I'd be able to tell you who, but I seem to
have lost track of the book even though I only had about 40 pages left.
Indicating that it's not very spell-binding.
The F for content is deserved for the protagonist's stance on crypto
regs- he's a crypto-producing businessman who is in _favor_ of export
restrictions, the craven government is _removing_ restrictions. The
problem that I have with this is that there's no explanation of why he's
in favor of crypto restrictions other than the usual "national security"
reasons. But those don't make sense for a businessman who's business is
selling crypto. Why would he want to fight to restrict his markets? This
180 degree turnaround from the way things work in the real world should
get some real explanation, but instead it's glossed over. Maybe in
the last 40 pages he turns out to be an NSA agent. :-)
It makes me think that the author read a very little about crypto
issues, just enough to know a bit of the jargon but not enough to
understand what's going on.
The writing is pretty formulaic suspense novel stuff. I didn't
think that the characters were developed very well. There were
a number of loose threads and inconsistencies. Maybe with
the editing that's done to get it onto tape those problems have been
taken out.
Ironically, the physical assault on the key escrow center was IMHO one
of the better parts of the book. Not because it was well-written, but
because it portrays what could very possibly happen if government key
escrow was made mandatory and huge number of keys were escrowed. Although
the actual attack would be more complex and less direct, possibly
involving bribing someone who has access to the database to retreive
keys for the attackers. But it got the point across that it's vulnerable.
--
Eric Murray N*Able Technologies www.nabletech.com
(email: ericm at the sites lne.com or nabletech.com) PGP keyid:E03F65E5
