NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #26/NN_1992_26.iso/spool/sci/crypt/4740

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-14 | 4.3 KB

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From: [e-mail]
Newsgroups: sci.crypt,alt.privacy,talk.pollitics.guns
Subject: Re: Limits on the Use of Cryptography?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 13 Nov 92 17:44:35 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: National Systems & Research, Vancouver WA
Lines: 78

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Terry Ritter) writes:
>
>  In <[e-mail]>
>  [e-mail] (Larry Loen) writes:
>
>>I think there is no need for a new law
>>at all.  I am not a legal expert, but I think that only information
>>in one's own brain is exempt from involuntary surrender.  Else, why
>>have search warrants in the first place?
>
>  It is one thing to be forced to surrender ciphertext, and quite
>  another to be forced, under criminal penalty, to surrender the
>  associated plaintext.  The point of this would be the ability to
>  convict someone who will not and *can* not afford to reveal the
>  plaintext because of greater penalty.
>
>  Many people (not so many here, of course) believe there *is* a
>  need for a new law.  Abstractly, I would prefer that everybody be
>  free to do everything; I find myself in the unfortunate position
>  that these desires are limited by reality.  In practice, it seems
>  to be necessary to have some limits and controls to allow society
>  to stumble along.
>
>  I have never had the experience of being searched under a warrant;
>  I expect that I would take it as an invasion of my privacy.  But
>  the reality is that such an "invasion" is *our heritage* under
>  common law.  Moreover, I am not aware that due-process search is
>  an active civil rights or personal freedom issue.  Can we really
>  expect to avoid this accepted part of our heritage simply because
>  we have a new technology that makes that possible?  I expect that
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>  if we wish to eliminate the use of warrants we will have to
>  confront that issue directly in a political forum.

    This is a fallicy. We have always been able to avoid disclosure of
secret information through hiding that hardcopy. The job of the police has been
to become aware of the existance of such hardcopy and then to find it.

    As for being searched, I think that you would not take it as an
invasion of your privacy but as a gut-renching violation of your person. It's
invasive, dehumanizing and callous. Try riding in a police car as an observer
sometime. Then think of a government out of just control.
>
>  Computer cryptography makes it possible for those who accumulate
>  information to avoid the due-process search which is expected
>  when people accumulate things.
>
>
>>But, whatever the state of the law actually is, I don't see any
>>reason that cryptography requires any _special_ treatment.  It just
>>isn't really different than a wall safe.
>
>  The difference is that what was once rare and easily breached by
>  the authorities is now on its way to becoming common and
>  impenetrable.  Cryptography really is different from a wall safe.
>

    It is not rare. Big criminals alwayse hide the most increminating of
evedence of their crimes. Toss the gun in the river or what have you. To
portray crypto as something new is false.

    Missing the point? The point is that the ends no matter how noble
do not justify the means.

    The good of true security in communications far outweigh the bad uses
of secure communication.

    If we inact a law to abridge personal privacy now, where will we be in
10 years (20,30,50) when that law is no longer needed because RSA falls to the
PC of the time. It will be that the erosion of our liberty was the net result.

    The job of crypto is to make the disclosure of plaintext so expensive
as to make disclosure unlikely. I think the governments time would be better
spent not in creating and attempting to enforce new laws that wont work but in
finding out how to break RSA et al when the proper existing points of law allow
it.

Regards, Ethan