Re: Notes from the SF Physical Cypherpunks meeting

[Christian Wettergren <cwe@it.kth.se>]

[I've cc:ed this note to one of the designers of KOM,
 Jacob Palme. Hi Jacob! -cwe]

| 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
| 
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