Re: Questions for Magaziner?

[Tim May <tcmay@got.net>]

(I'm leaving the damned multiple lists cc:ed on this, as I have no idea
where this thread came from. For those of you who send me notes saying I am
not allowed to post on your list, plonk.)


At 2:33 AM -0700 9/19/98, Alan Olsen wrote:
>On Fri, 18 Sep 1998, Robert Hettinga wrote:
>
>> Anyway, In light of more recent crypto-shenanigans from Billary, and the
>> fact that this thing's a small crowd, I figured I'd ask if anyone on these
>> lists had a question they wanted me to ask him.
>
>"With all the demands from Governent to escrow keys, what steps are being
>taken to protect the these keys and/or backdoors from misuse from people
>within the Government and those outside of the Government?"
>
>"Would you use escrowed cryptography for your private communications?  Who
>would you trust to hold those keys?"

Well, I believe that even asking these sorts of questions (and possibly
getting answers from government) plays into the hands of the GAKkers.

After all, suppose they give pretty good answers? What if, for example,
they propose a committee consisting of the entire Supreme Court, the
Director of the Sierra Club, and so on, and say that a _unanimous_ vote is
required to gain access to a key?

Does this at all change the fundamental unconstitutionality of telling me
that I will face imprisonment if I speak or write in a manner which is not
part of their "escrow" arrangement? If I keep a diary without depositing an
escrowed key with this noble, careful, thoughtful committee of wise persons?

Of course not. My speech, my writing, my private codes, my whisperings, my
phone conversations...all of these...are not subject to govenmwental
approval. "Congress shall make no law..."

Doesn't say that Congress or the courts of the President get to declare
illegal certain modes of speaking. (*)

(* Please, I hope no one brings up "loud speech," "shouting fire," "obscene
speech," "seditious speech," "slanderous speech," etc. This is well-trod
ground, but clearly all of these apparent limits on speech, whether one
agrees with them or not, have nothing to do with an overbroad requirement
that speech only be in certain languages, that letters only be written on
carbon paper with a copy filed with the government, and so on. The
restrictions on _some_ kinds of speech are not a license to license speech,
as it were, or to require escrow of papers, letters, diaries, and phone
conversations and such.)

My point about Alan's (and others') points is that if we get engaged in
this kind of debate about how key escrow might work, we shift the debate
from where it ought to be to where they _want_ it to be, namely, to issues
of practicality.

My view is that my writings are mine. They can try to get them with a
search warrant or a court order, but they'd better not threaten me with
imprisonment if I choose to write in some language they can't read. And
that's all crypto really is, of course. Just another language.

--Tim May

(This space left blank pending determ. of acceptability to the gov't.)
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.