Re: Rogue Governments Issuing Policy Tokens

["Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>]

At 8:49 AM -0800 11/19/96, Hal Finney wrote:
>From: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>
>> The problem (for GAK) of "rogue governments" is this: a government such as
>> Libya or Panama, henceforth to be known as "Rogueitania," issues policy
>> cards to all of its citizens, and to all those visiting Rogueitania, and
>> perhaps through the mail to anyone who pays some fee.
>
>I don't think this would happen.  Some kind of secret information or
>hardware is going to be needed to create policy tokens.  (Otherwise
>anybody could make one.)  That means that HP, and therefore ultimately
>the U.S. government, is going to have to approve those governments which
>are allowed to issue such tokens.  HP will have to provide them some
>special hardware or something to make them.  The tokens will only be
>accepted if they have proper secrets inside them.

But even such "U.S. approval" is fraught with problems (for the U.S. and
for public relations). Some examples:

- Arab boycott of Israel...will U.S. be complicit in helping the machinery
of the boycott run? (Actually, H-P could run afoul of several U.S. laws...)

- Myanmar (Burma) wants the evil dissidents controlled (a case much
discussed by PRZ). Which side will the U.S. support?

(As noted in the Declan story, the machinery of having government issue
policy cards, if successful, essentially blocks dissidents and
revolutionaries from gaining certain powers. The U.S. _used_ to support
dissidents and revolutionaries in various countries...no longer, I guess.
The price of winning the Cold War: complacency.)

- Many countries trade with Cuba, while the U.S. does not. So, which side
of this dispute does a U.S.-approved policy token support?

(By the way, Canada is one such nation. If Canada gets the key to issuing
policy tokens, they can issue them to those travelling to Cuba on business.
This would make them a "rogue government" vis-a-vis U.S. policy. More
serious examples also exist.)

And so on. Except for a very few countries which are closely aligned with
U.S. policy on nearly every issue, most countries have internal and
external policies with which we as a nation have serious disagreements.

In fact, for nearly every country to which policy tokens are to be licensed
and approved, the U.S. would have to make some policy decisions which are
bound to offend one group or another. And take time. And raise issues here
in the U.S. Take any country, even nominal allies, and these internal
issues are very thorny indeed.


>I can't see the U.S. allowing Libya and similar countries to create policy
>tokens.  The whole point of this exercise is to prevent these countries
>from being able to use strong crypto.  So they will certainly not be on
>the approved list.

I mention Libya as an extreme example (the same example cited in the
Fiat-Shamir "is-a-person" example of rogue governments issuing passports).
The examples above are likely targets for policy card exports, though. The
issue is clear: the list of "fully-compliant" nations is short indeed, and
few nations are going to accept imports of U.S. technology in which the
U.S. government sets the policy on how and where the imports may be used.

I think this will kill "policy tokens" as a viable U.S. export. This,
actually, may be the expected outcome. ("Hey, we gave you permission to
export this stuff...we can't help it if no other countries allow their
citizens to import the stuff.")

>For these reasons I don't think the HP idea solves the export problem
>for U.S. hardware and software makers.  And the response by opinion leaders
>has ranged from ho-hum to negative, despite the self-serving cheerleading
>by HP management.  Companies which try to sell computers with these chips
>in them risk getting a "big brother inside" (to use Tim's very effective
>slogan) reputation.  I think this initiative is going nowhere.

Yes, ironic that the orginal "Big Brother Inside" logo I showed was of
course based on the "Intel Inside" logo...and now Intel is actually
involved in this mess. How appropriate.

Time to dust off those "Big Brother Inside" stickers someone had printed up
a couple of years ago.

--Tim May

"The government announcement is disastrous," said Jim Bidzos,.."We warned IBM
that the National Security Agency would try to twist their technology."
[NYT, 1996-10-02]
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."