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- Newsgroups: sci.crypt
- Subject: Re: Registered Keys - why the need?
- Message-ID: <a_rubin.720982294@dn66>
- From: a_rubin@dsg4.dse.beckman.com (Arthur Rubin)
- Date: 5 Nov 92 16:51:34 GMT
- References: <715.517.uupcb@grapevine.lrk.ar.us> <1992Nov01.233637.138278@watson.ibm.com> <1992Nov3.090942.1626@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu>
- Organization: Beckman Instruments, Inc.
- Nntp-Posting-Host: dn66.dse.beckman.com
- Lines: 44
-
- In <1992Nov3.090942.1626@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu> denning@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu writes:
-
- >If law enforcement loses the ability to conduct court-authorized
- >taps, they will have to use other means if even possible, such as
- >breaking and entering. This is not necessarily better in terms of
- >protecting liberties and privacy.
- >
-
- YES IT IS. Law enforcement is likely to leave some evidence if they are
- physically present. Tapping bits may leave no trail. I would like a
- requirement that (1) all wiretaps must be performed by a public utility
- company, and (2) they must publish the list of numbers tapped within 1 year
- of the tap. With (1), there is a reasonable chance that the FBI won't
- perform undocumented taps, because, if found out, the person being tapped
- probably cannot be prosecuted at all . With (2), if someone is tapped,
- they would eventually find out, and be able to sue the government for
- invasion of privacy. However, this paragraph is not relevent to sci.crypt,
- the group I am reading this thread on.
-
- ...
-
- >I believe I said this before, but let me remind everyone that the
- >government has not proposed that keys be registered.
-
- That's because they don't see any benefit to it, unless they routinely
- decrypt messages to ensure that people are using only registered keys.
- (It's time to bring back the thread on braided stream encryption --- that
- shows a benefit to adding random streams to multiple messages, so law
- enforcement cannot be assured that all the plaintext from an encrypted
- message has been decrypted.)
-
- >... I believe that
- >Ron Rivest was the first to make this suggestion.
-
- His interest is that he claims that most encryption is covered by his
- patent, so he has a right to the registered keys as a liscensing
- requirement. I don't know what your motives are --- I am forced to assume
- that you think registering keys would be of benefit to law enforcement, in
- spite of evidence to the contrary.
- --
- Arthur L. Rubin: a_rubin@dsg4.dse.beckman.com (work) Beckman Instruments/Brea
- 216-5888@mcimail.com 70707.453@compuserve.com arthur@pnet01.cts.com (personal)
- My opinions are my own, and do not represent those of my employer.
- My interaction with our news system is unstable; please mail anything important.
-