NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/sci/crypt/4595

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-11 | 4.4 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Carl Ellison)
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,alt.society.civil-liberty
Subject: Re: Limits on the Use of Cryptography?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 11 Nov 92 17:01:10 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Organization: Stratus Computer, Software Engineering
Lines: 84
NNTP-Posting-Host: ellisun.sw.stratus.com

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Terry Ritter) writes:
>
>    The police bust an alleged child molester, and take possession
>    of his PC.  They believe that the hard drive contains a full
>    database of young kids who have been *or may be* assaulted.
>    That database is enciphered.
>
> Now, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to defend
> cryptography to ordinary voters, congress people and newspaper
> reporters.

    [ . . . ]

>
> So what do *you* say?
>


Terry asks the key question.

I have a liberal friend in the People's Republic of Cambridge (MA :-) who
has only a Mac-user's acquanitance with computers to whom I was trying to
explain this issue.  Her reaction was "what are you trying to hide with
cryptography anyway?  ...that's just a silly game emotional infants play."
[She had known an emotional infant who was heavily into inventing the
perfect cryptosystem -- perhaps like people we see on sci.crypt
occasionally.]

So -- I had to explain to her about the dangers of hacking -- starting with
funds transfers.  We go from there to industrial espionage.  Consider, for
example, my e-mail working relationships with co-workers in Stratus.

Stratus is a multi-national company.  We have engineering organizations in
various cities.  We cooperate in new system design via e-mail (and
telephone and video conferencing).  We log in from home.  (Stratus provides
terminals, modems and phone lines to most employees.)  There is a hell of a
lot of sensitive information going through public carriers where it can be
tapped.

This is not like the postal system.  Back when I worked in a classified
facility, I was told to send SECRET documents by the US Mail, inside a
plain mailing envelope with an inner envelope giving the security
classification.  That was in the days of the gov't post office and they
trusted it.  (I just assume they still do.)

Electronic communication is not that closed a system.  The evidence for
breaking into it is ephemeral at best.  At least if a postal worker snagged
a letter, there was physical evidence and he would be in BIG trouble.
With electronic communication, there's little evidence -- good deniability,
to use a hopefully archaic term.  So, we have to have both authentication
and privacy in electronic communications.

***** SO -- with this much explanation, I got her to think a little more
about encryption.  She now recognizes it as necessary.  However, even with
her bias against abuses by recent Republican administrations, I doubt
she would agree that cryptography needs to be available, unregulated to
the average citizen.

I share the notion that a citizen's privacy should be a fundamental right
and that the government is the enemy -- but this is no place for that
political argument.

This is the place for concrete examples which will convince even the person
who doesn't share my belief and who *never will share that belief*.

Let's answer Terry's question with more examples.

Once we have a good enough groundwork of solid examples, then maybe we can
address (in some other group) how to calm down the father of a 9-year-old
girl who has been raped by this mad porno-user who owns a diskette the
police can't read.

(It could as easily be a locked safe no one in the country could open.
Defiance of the police when the people are against you is a defiance of
each of those individuals -- and there's nothing more infuriating to many
people than "(nyah, nyah) I've got a secret and I'll never tell you.".  A
person (voter) infuriated like that needs to be calmed down and turned back
into a rational being before he votes.)

--
-- <<Disclaimer: All opinions expressed are my own, of course.>>
-- Carl Ellison                        [e-mail]
-- Stratus Computer Inc.    M3-2-BKW        TEL: [phone]
-- 55 Fairbanks Boulevard ; Marlborough MA 01752-1298    FAX: [phone]