Re: "Key Escrow" --- the very idea

[solman@MIT.EDU]

> Eight pieces seems too few to me.  It's too easy for gov't agencies to "lean
> on" eight individuals or organizations (someone else suggested "watchdog"
> groups as fragment holding agencies, but that doesn't seem very good.  Groups
> can change over time, respond to pressure.  Putting a lot of fragments in a
> few hands seems fairly fundamentally flawed).  I'd rather see thousands.

The point here is that if the evil government wants to go busting in on
your conversations without a warrant, it can't. Even if they cheated and
looked in the escrow for the names of you secret holders, they'd have to
show them a warrant. The government couldn't try pressuring that many people
before one of them blabbed and that would lose those folks doing the
pressuring their jobs and quite probably result in prison time and political
ramifications.

I still don't like the idea of escrows because it assumes that I have
something to hide, but if you have to do an escrow, I thing eight people
is fine.

JWS