Selling your sole to DOJ ...err, devil Zimmermann?

[attila <attila@primenet.com>]

= This is a bit much, if not off the wall. Any glimmer of
= truth..?  
= 
        [snip]  
=   
= A lot of people think that PGP encryption is unbreakable and that the  
= NSA/FBI/CIA/MJ12 cannot read their mail. This is wrong, 
=
        [snip]
= Since version 2.1, PGP ("Pretty Good Privacy") has been rigged
= to allow the NSA to easily break encoded messages. Early in
= 1992, the author, Paul Zimmerman, was arrested by Government
= agents. He was told that he would be set up for trafficking
= narcotics unless he complied. The Government agency's demands
= were simple: He was to put a virtually undetectable trapdoor,
= designed by the NSA, into all future releases of PGP, and to
= tell no-one. 

        well, as to the methodology of threatening (and 
    actually prosecuting) narcotics complicity or conspiracy
    under Title 18 861(a), I can vouch for the method...   all
    "they" need is a judge like Peck in El Paso (assassinated on
    the bench) or Foley in Vegas (retired and gone --a hero)
    --both were better known as "Judge Ray Bean, law west of the
    Pecos"  and just about as knowledgeable and reliable....

        First, let me state: this is not a frontal attack on 
    Zimmermann himself, but a question given some of the 
    historical precedents and circumstances, and their 
    implications on the basis of human behavior 

            --particularly the act of saving one's ass.
        
        Zimmermann is a political flake, a warmed over 60s
    liberal. 

        I would find it difficult, despite his apparent altruism
    and left-over 60s need for redress, to believe that
    Zimmermann's coding of PGP was other than a commercial
    stepping stone (judging from both his prior and later 
    actions); and,

        Zimmermann is nothing but the true liberal he always 
    was --most of the 60s liberals were against the government
    for one thing only: Vietnam --a morality issue as they saw 
    it --but they are *still* liberals with liberal morality and 
    a 'government solves all' outlook on life.

        I won't go into chain of command and discipline, but I 
    consider my service to have been *wasted* by a government 
    interested more in a weapons testing playground far more than 
    any ideology or righteous need of the free world (but we sure 
    used the ordinance; after all, the difference between men 
    and boys is the price of their toys!).

        --but the 60s liberal was inflamed by a sense of 
    (im)morality.
    
        therefore, we are back to the same old question: does the
    leopard ever really change his spots?  have you ever seen a
    liberal who would not sell his soul to the devil?  

        I do not wish to blow a conservative horn, but given:

                "the ax and the firing squad are merely stones 
            on the road to freedom."
                    --attila

    the sacrificial lamb is certainly not your average
    warmed-over 60s liberal who is generally no better than the
    Stalinist "socialist" sympathizers which dominated both the
    State Department and the White House during FDR's reign, as 
    their cadres gave the Manhattan project and Eastern Europe to
    Old Joe.   

        FDR's fiasco was also the first perfect example of
    OSI/NSA not willing to prosecute since they were cracking
    Russian crypto.  For instance, I always WANTED to believe 
    Alger Hiss was innocent in so much as his son, Tony, was a 
    classmate at Harvard and we were on the editorial board of 
    the Harvard Crimson at the same time  --but he certainly
    wasn't innocent with the recent release of 50 year old NSA 
    files.

        therefore, I would not even hesitate to say in relation 
    to the accusations against Zimmermann: QUITE POSSIBLE; and I 
    would certainly expect our sleazy government to make the 
    offer.

        I am not interested in sitting in judgement of Phil 
    Zimmermann --let his conscience be his judge. 

        however:

        ***  WE WOULD BE FOOLS NOT TO EXAMINE WITH A FINE ***
        ***  TOOTH COMB PGP's IMPLEMENTATION OF THE RSA   ***
        ***  ALGORITHMS                                   ***

        secondly, there is nothing to prevent us, as a group, 
    from building a universal RSA application with a portable GUI
    (I think we can all afford Zinc (yuk...  but it covers the
    platforms cheaply --and this is not an exotic interface 
    requirement), and we can leave open hooks and interfaces for 
    mail, streaming, and every other purpose with a single 
    structure call.

            ANYONE WISH TO VOLUNTEER?  --for both problems.

        and, if no-one else has the guts to post the new PGP key 
    server compliant system software as freeware source code, I
    do!  "Their" only solution for me is murder, which is
    certainly not below their dignity; but I am old enough not to
    care.

        NOW, given that Zimmermann was supposedly insolvent at 
    the time of the "their" investigation, where did the money
    come for PGP, Inc. and where did the money come for the
    acquisition of ViaCrypt (the commercial licensee)?  

        Zimmermann was NOT funded prior to the acquisition and 
    PGP, Inc. was announced virtually the same day the DOJ 
    dropped the case.  

        not intending to slander Phil, but these are types of
    prosecution deals our "government of whores" (O'Rourke) is 
    famous for proposing  --in other words: the premise is
    open for interpretation.

        I've always believed it is not only to be clean, but to 
    appear clean in that there is no reason for suspicion of 
    anything but clean...   does Zimmermann make the test?

        HOWEVER, I do think the RSA algorithm (for instance,
    the freebie RSA routines used in mixmaster) and its
    associated code are safe to a given bit level which 
    theoretically can be incremented indefinitely as hardware
    performance advances accordingly. 

        --I seriously question "they" can break the algorithm
    itself except by brute force. The question is how far up the
    bitstream are "they?"  

        and, we should never be so complacent as to presume
    "they" will not land on an algorithmic method to create the
    primes from the bit stream --after all, they have two of the 
    four numbers and the products...

        just playing a hypothetical game on "their" fears,
    "their" pronoucements, "their" tolerance of low number
    bit encryption, and NSAs use of hardware at least a
    generation ahead, I would gamble NSA's brute force methods
    can probably break 1024 bits currently, and in a "reasonable"
    time.

        NSA is a game --they will grant the public 64 bits based
    on their estimate of the time required with a given level of
    hardware to break EVERY message in a finite number of
    sub-seconds --leaving the heavy hardware for the good
    stuff,

        at this point Thomas Scheling's theories come into play
    --I took Scheling's first course in "Game Theory" at Harvard
    in '60 --he was extremely ignorant on number theory and
    related statistical analysis --we called the course: "War
    Games."

        secondly, NSA, and the rest of "them," will play the game 
    of appeasement, fighting the good guys with delaying tactics
    as they surrender 64, then 128, then 256, etc. --talk, talk,
    talk...  and Nero is still fiddling...

        meanwhile NSA's capability to crack the good stuff is
    increasing rapidly enough to keep up with the directive that
    they must be able to decode EVERYTHING.  

        there are routines to eliminate brute force as a means of
    decryption, but they are painful and cumbersome in a public 
    key system.   plus, publication will bring the morning after
    visit from two or more spooks in raincoats...   who are not
    your friends.

        the game of appeasement depends on enough people WANTING
    (not necessarily willing) to believe that what they hear from
    big brother is the truth, or maybe better expressed as that
    old "Faith in America, land of our fathers" routine.

        anyone around here with insufficient cynicism to buy into
    NWO appeasement?

                attila,   29 Aug 96


--
Now, with a black jack mule you wish to harness, you walk up,
look him in the eye, and hit him with a 2X4 over the left eye.  
If he blinks, hit him over the right eye! He'll cooperate 
    --so will politicians.