NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/sci/crypt/4842

Text File | 1992-11-15 | 3.7 KB | 74 lines

Newsgroups: sci.crypt
Path: sparky!uunet!walter!hum.bellcore.com!nrh
From: [e-mail] (Nat Howard)
Subject: Re: Registered Keys - why the need?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Nntp-Posting-Host: hum.bellcore.com
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Nat Howard)
Organization: Bellcore, Morristown NJ
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 18:23:23 GMT
Lines: 60

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Carl Ellison) writes:
>My question remains: how will key registration preserve the ability to
>wiretap?  If the damage done by wiretaps has been so extensive, unless the
>OC and drug traffic figures are incredibly stupid, they will have acquired
>or will be about to acquire off-the-shelf phone scramblers and message
>encryption devices.  Granted, there may be some who are of the old school
>-- refuse to learn about PCs and e-mail -- but that gang will die off
>(partly by wiretapping, it seems).

Let me amplify this point.  If some scheme is used whereby
our keys are registered, then (presumably) only honest folk will register
their keys: A law that simply says that it's illegal to use cryptography
in a certain way will not deter people already committing more deadly
crimes from using good cryptography.

In other words, when someone proposes a law to limit the use of cryptography,
the large effects would be on innocent folks: the bad guys will ignore them.
(That's part of *why* they are "bad guys").

An example: I was once in a discussion about the exportation of DES -- the
argument against: "Do you want Saddam to be able to use DES?"

But Saddam *can* use DES: as soon as public versions of DES were available
outside the US, the argument against US exportation lost almost all of its
point.   The remaining law inconveniences only those who choose to obey
the law.  It doesn't actually keep Saddam from getting anything.

Thus the law could be called "The Inconvenience Innocent People Act".  Its
net effect, it seems to me, is  to weaken US competitiveness.

Similarly, the right thing to ask is if proposed laws regulating crypto
are likely to have an important deterrent impact on a person already
outside the law.

If so, the merits may at least be considered, but *IF NOT* then surely
there's no point in such a law: it can only inconvenience the
innocent.

My arguments stated here apply, of course, only to something already
available outside the US (such as DES) or available to criminals (such
as IBM PC's).  These particular arguments wouldn't apply to something that
only the US could create (secure NSA crypto boxes?).

So, in sum, my argument is this: a law that would prevent only law-abiding
citizens from using crypto is really about inconveniencing (and depriving
of privacy) those same innocents.  Its effect on bad guys *cannot* be
considered a merit, because those benefits do not exist, or are so minor
as to be not worth considering.

Thus quotes about how much wiretapping saved the US are only
tangentially relevant.  The bad guys will use secure communications
*regardless* of crypto laws.  Thus laws against cryptography will *not*
save the US much money (there will presumably be some marginal cases) and
will have the private communications of innocent people in the hands of the
government the minute there's a "menace to national security".

Since the US was technically in a state of Emergency from around WWII to
(as I recall) the Ford administration, this hopeful notion that the
courts are the only ones who will grant access to the keys may, I think,
be discounted.