Re: The GAK Momentum is Building...

["Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>]

again, more black/white cpunk thought that goes along the lines,
"unless we have won everything, we have lost everything".

you guys are awfully cynical. clipper has failed its original
objectives by miles. the last-ditch efforts by bureacrats to
get some semblance of "key escrow" from recent developments
are increasingly pathetic.

I'd say the significant dilution of clipper over the years
is a very strong victory for pro-privacy, pro-cryptography
advocates.

the Clipper proposals are increasingly moving into the
area of "key management". large companies will always
want key management features, to deal with employees who
forget passwords, leave the company, etc.-- face it, this
is a simple reality. essentially all the latest
moves amount to, imho, is the government trying to get
its fingers into these key management infrastructures.

so the recent stuff that is emerging, I would hesitate
to call "gak". it sounds more like "gaki", or government
access to key infrastructures. these infrastructures are
going to be built up regardless of what cpunks wish-- 
private businesses simply must have them. frankly all it
looks like to me is the government saying, "we reserve
the right to subpoena keys". this will always be the case.
bureacrats are always trying to pass new laws when old
ones already apply.

>It is a done deal,
>--Lucky, who told you this three years ago.

again, more simplistic summaries. there is a whole range of
evil proposals that the government could be involved in, and
we have to begin to discriminate between them. the government
could be the sole manager of all key infrastructures and the
entity that licenses all crypto for any use-- that
I would consider total worse case reality.  or the government
could have tentacles stuck into key infrastructures that
businesses build up. the latter is not quite as odious or
threatening. in fact it simply sounds like the government
saying, "we reserve the right to subpoena keys". (of course
the latter could always evolve into the former. I suppose
the cynics would contend that it is inevitable.)