Re: Info on Netscape's key escrow position

[Alan Olsen <alano@teleport.com>]

At 11:01 PM 12/1/95 -0800, you wrote:
>
>  I had lunch with Jim Clark today, and explained the furor that was
>currently going on in cypherpunks and elsewhere.  After lunch he sent
>me the e-mail that I've attached below to pass along.  I think the gist
>of it is that if governments require key escrow, we will have to do it
>in order to sell our products with encryption into those countries.
[rest removed for brevity]

Well someone has to say it...

"I am glad to see that Jim Clark is no longer hocking up GAK."

I just hope Netscape does not get seduced by the dark side of the feds and
impliment GAK "because they have to".  It is one thing to have cryptography
that is brute forcable in a few weeks, it is another to have a secret key
that some nosey government agent use to decrypt it in seconds.  If Netscape
impliments GAK I will move to something else because I will not be able to
trust that some other nasty surprise will exist in the software.  (As well
as having no real security left in the product.)

Do I beleive that Netscape will impliment GAK in the near future?  Not
really.  Not unless they go through another purge like the one back in
February(?), but I do not see that as being very likely.  (With the current
IPO, news of a employee purge would probibly drive down the stock and that
would be the last thing the top brass would want.)
|       What is the Eye in the Food Pyramid?      | alano@teleport.com   |
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