[941] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Dorothy and the four Horseman
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Carl Ellison)
Thu Jun 5 19:29:11 1997
Date: Thu, 05 Jun 1997 18:03:51 -0400
To: sameer <sameer@c2.net>
From: Carl Ellison <cme@cybercash.com>
Cc: cryptography@c2.net
In-Reply-To: <199703200145.RAA20900@gabber.c2.net>
At 05:45 PM 3/19/97 -0800, sameer wrote:
> An interesting thing about showing examples of crypto use and
>criminals:
>
>1) If law enforcement managed to decrypt the data and catch the criminal,
> crypto didn't stop "justice"
>2) If law enforcement couldn't decrypt the data, there's no proof that
> the data would have helped bring the criminal to "justice"
Yes. (2) could be likened to a statement of the form: "we know he had a
private conversation with someone in the men's room at Union Station and we
didn't have a bug planted there, so we don't know if what he said would have
incriminated him and allowed us to put him away for life."
To bring it closer to home, does undecrypted ciphertext "exist" any more
than the sound waves which went unrecorded in that men's room? ...legally,
that is?
> Saying that 'criminals don't use crypto' is unwise of course,
of course.
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