Contempt of court

[Tom Knight <tk@reagan.ai.mit.edu>]

I wouldn't want to encourage anyone to contempt of court, but, strictly
hypothetically, there is a very simple way to answer the request to hand
over keys to encrypted data.  Simply assure that you have a copy of the
encrypted data available, then construct one-time-pad data of the same
length as the encrypted data, such that when the two are XORed, you get
your choice of plaintext.  Hand over the "one time pad."  This argues
powerfully that one might want such one time pads available and in use
even if you are really using a more convenient encryption technology.

Kids: don't do this at home.