Re: How might new GAK be enforced?

[Ryan Russell/SYBASE <Ryan.Russell@sybase.com>]

One way to handle the problem mentioned below
is this:

Using your GAK-approved encryption, send a note
that contains a PGP encrypted body (or insert your
crypto of choice here.)  What this does is makes it
look like you're sending a proper GAK only note
to folks who are checking headers and such.  If 
they actually decrypt it (with the proper court order), 
they will see that you've got more encryption inside, 
and drag your butt off to court and try to make you 
give up your key etc...

If they decrypt it (and they have no proper court
order) they either go away because they can't call 
you on it, or they throw you on the bad-guy list,
or drag you off to area 51 and beat you with rubber 
hoses and some such.

Point being, You wouldn't look like you were doing anything
wrong unless they got as far as decrypting your messages.
If you're legally busted, your messages are secure.  If 
they illegally decrypt your messages, your messages
are secure, and you may have some recourse for
suing the feds.

    Ryan

---------- Previous Message ----------
To: tcmay
cc: smith, cypherpunks
From: smith @ SCTC.COM (Rick Smith) @ smtp
Date: 10/01/96 04:03:10 PM
Subject: Re: How might new GAK be enforced?

Tim May asks:

: Any other ideas on how the government plans to enforce GAK, to make GAK the
: overwhelmingly-preferred solution?

The problem seems somewhat analogous to the software copy protection
problem and maybe the enfocement will be similar: make "examples" of a
few high profile offenders who are exchanging blatantly un-GAKed
traffic with foreigners. This assumes they fine tune the law to make
such behavior illegal without having to prove you yourself exported
the stuff to them. Wonder what the Supremes will say to that.

But that's not the end of the story. If there is lots of GAK encrypted
traffic flowing about, then encrypted traffic in general is no longer
noteworthy. So as long as your traffic looks like GAK, you won't be
hassled until they try to read your traffic.

So it's possible that products will appear that use pseudo-GAK
protocols -- they look just like their GAKed cousins but the GAK
fields contain plausiable garbage instead of keys. It could even
turn out to be a vendor "quality control" thing -- oops, the GAK
was supposed to work but...

You couldn't do that with Clipper (except via Matt Blaze's brute
forcing of the LEAF checksum) because the crypto wouldn't decrypt a
packet with an invalid LEAF checksum. Since it was a sealed hardware
module, implementers had no choice but to play by those rules. There's
no such enforcable limitation on commercial software implementations.

Rick.