Re: John Gilmore and the Great Internet Snake Drive

[mgraffam@mhv.net]

On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, Kent Crispin wrote:

> It occurs to me that an interesting use for the eff des cracker would
> be the following: since the government asserts that DES is safe, then
> a DES encrypted archive of crypto code should be exportable.

No. Encrypting with DES, or any symmetric cipher
does not destroy the information, which is what is controlled.
Even losing the key does not destroy the information, as we all know:
keys can be recovered it is just a matter of the work involved.

Encrypting with an OTP is interesting at first .. but considering that
distributing a crypto archive or the completed works of Shakespeare
amount to the same thing after an OTP has been used, I am not convinced
it has much meaning.

The _spirit_ of the law is that no crypto device can be exported. Programs
are considered to be devices.. as is evidenced by the recent decision
in the Bernstein case.

We don't need encrypted archives floating around.. we need to show that,
like cars, crypto devices (programs or otherwise!) are useful even if
they can be used by bad people for bad purposes.

Abstract things like exporting a hunk of random crap and arguing about
it don't achieve this, and will never do so in the minds of laymen
with no real interest in crypto.

As for me, I prefer the position of my countryman, Henry David Thoreau ..
civil disobedience:

Michael J. Graffam (mgraffam@mhv.net)
http://www.mhv.net/~mgraffam -- Philosophy, Religion, Computers, Crypto, etc
Be a munitions trafficker: http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/rsa-keygen.html

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