Re: Notes from the SF Physical Cypherpunks meeting

[minow@apple.com (Martin Minow)]

Thanks to everyone who took the trouble to correct errors in my
notes from Saturday's Cypherpunks meeting. They were written
for my own benefit -- and for the benefit of some friends who
couldn't be there. Since I can give away information without
losing it (to misquote Thomas Jefferson), I'm happy to share it
with the cypherpunks.

A comment from Matts Kallioniemi might be worth some further discussion:

>>COM e-mail/bbs system (Sweden) -- operator could backup
>>e-mail, but not read it.
>
>Sure. The database was encrypted by using XOR with the string
>"KOM". That was the sorry state of encryption in the early eighties.
>

Encrypting the database with a fixed string offers a good example
of how "locks keep honest people honest." This would prevent an
operator from unintentionally reading a message in case it was
revealed by, perhaps, a disk sector editor or crash dump.

I suspect that the state of encryption in Sweden in the early
eighties was somewhat stronger than XOR (wasn't Hagelin a Swede who
moved to Switzerland to start Crypto AG?), but not necessarily
visible to the general public.

The Swedish government has a rather strong tradition of protection
of individual privacy (encrypting COM e-mail is one example).
For example, the initial Swedish implementation of a national
criminal database in the mid 1970's (equivalent to the US NCIC) used
dialback telexes to prevent unauthorized (and untracked) access.
A recent newspaper article noted that some police officers were
being investigated for unauthorized access to the personal information
of a collegue who had complained of sexual harassment.

Martin Minow
minow@apple.com