Re: Anti-Electronic Racketeering Act of 1995 (fwd)

[Weld Pond <weld@l0pht.com>]

Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com> wrote:
---------------Original Message---------------
We'll just supply the feds with some of the key testing code developed for
collective cracking of RSA-129 or RC4.  That code is "a universal 
decoding device or program."  All it takes is a few years... <g>

DCF
----------End of Original Message----------

That raises an interesting issue.  How difficult to use or how time 
consuming can a program or method be to be considered "a universal 
decoding device or program."  Can I give the feds a program that will 
crack my messages in a few days when run on one of their supercomputers?
If this is not acceptable what will be their rational?

Will they have to invent a huge new bureaucracy to manage all these 
devices and programs?  Theoretically, every person in the US could submit 
many different devices and programs.  One could bank on the feds losing 
or misplacing your program if they were innundated enough.  Can you 
destroy your only copy of the "universal decoding program" after giving 
them their copy?  Does every message or file I encrypt need a cleartext 
header that describes which of my escrowed devices or programs wil decrypt 
it? 

There are many problems with this idea of Government Access to Devices or 
Programs (GADOP).  A toolset that could build many different encryption 
and decryption variations based on psuedo-random input may be a good tool 
to fight this nonsense.
 
      Weld Pond   -  weld@l0pht.com   -   http://www.l0pht.com/~weld
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