Re: Is there a lawyer in the house?

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 9:27 PM 12/7/95, cme@acm.org wrote:

>It could be even worse.  I was on a panel last year with Scott Charney (sp?)
>(I believe from DoJ) during which he commented that if you give your secret
>key to anyone -- e.g., your own company -- then you have given up the
>presumption of privacy.  That leaves the police open to get that secret
>without a warrant.  This claim should be checked by a real lawyer.

Huh?

You mean if you give me your key the police can get it from me without a
warrant? What if I don't want to give it up, and you don't? How would the
police get it without a warrant?

(And "I" could be your employer, so the point is clear.)

And even more strikingly, what if you give your private key to your lawyer
for safekeeping? Has attorney-client privilege gone away?

(Granted, there are ways to break attorney-client privilege, but these are
rare exceptions. In any case, the police could not get the private key
without a court order, warrant, whatever.)

I can believe that some cases of giving up keys wipes out one's arguments
based strictly on "privacy," but not that it wipes out other arguments.

It seems to me that if one wants to voluntarily escrow private keys, for
safekeeping, one's personal lawyer is a safe bet: it is very difficult to
break this kind of attorney-client confidentiality, from what I know of
such things.

--Tim May

Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government.
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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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