Re: <fyi> World-market Crypto for SSL (fwd)

[Ken Williams <jkwilli2@unity.ncsu.edu>]

suggestions or help with this one?  what do you ppl think?

Regards,

tattooman
http://152.7.11.38/~tattooman

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 15 Feb 1998 11:48:01 -0500
From: XXX
To: Ken Williams <jkwilli2@unity.ncsu.edu>
Subject: Re: <fyi> World-market Crypto for SSL

Hi Ken,

	Thanks for the note.  I've got an idea I wanted to bounce off you,
since Tattooman seems a suitably non-corporate persona.  I'm one of those
who believes that the world will be a better place if all people have ready
access to strong crypto, for their own personal musing (for what hope has
democracy -- or individualism, or community -- if people can not safely
muse on unpopular or illicit options, deciding what is right by carefully
considering what is wrong as well as right.)  I also believe that strong
crypto is all that can allow online international commerce, and commerce
and trade is the fundamental alternative to war, armed might, and
spook-driven controls on inter-cultural relationships.)  The core struggle
of our time is likely to be between those who want to rely on from-the-top
bureaucratic control, essentially militaristic control of friends and foe,
and those who trust instead in evolving common needs and mutually
beneficial trade interactions between societies and nations.

	(The fact that the most valuable resource of any future information
age -- intellectual capital, human brainpower -- is much more equitably
distributed among nations than other "natural" resources, like coal, or
gold, also gives me hope for a future in which all nations can offer
intellectual trade-good of value and partake of a health and
profitable-to-all world trade.)

	Here's my thought:  in the immediate future, Fortify (or some
similar freeware product) will offer anyone in the world a chance to
upgrade the tens of millions of export-quality (weak crypto) versions of
Netscape in circulation, to make them strong-crypto products with both SSL
(and soon S/MIME) available to all.

	One of the big questions in how this world-wide struggle between
statist forces who want to restrict individual (and corporate) access to
strong crypto internationally, and those of us who instead want to foster
the widespread use of strong crypto, is how to educate and promote the use
of strong-crypto versions of Netscape (since that is today the upgradable
product available worldwide.)

	What I would like to see is one or several CGI packages which folks
could put on their websites which would quickly alert a user that the
browser he is using has only limited and restricted export-quality weak
crypto, and that he or she should immediately consider upgrading to strong
crypto by obtaining Fortify (or other upgrade packages) from XXX website.
C2, which is accessible through the Fortify website: www.fortify.net has
something like this for SSL.  I'm looking into getting something similar
for S/MIME -- assuming McKay or others get the S/MIME-enhanced version of
Fortify in circulation within a few weeks.

	Any ideas about how to get this going?

	Regards,

		XXX

PS.  Your note caught me as I was thinking this through, so you doubtless
got a more wordy and political response than you expected.  Still, this is
an open issue of great importance, IMNSHO, and I'd be grateful for any
energy or suggestions you might offer.