Re: Commerce Undersecretary William Reinsch defends the government’s encryption policy

["Ernest Hua" <hua@teralogic-inc.com>]

> We want to work through the market. What that means is, if the market
> turns in unexpected directions, we have to be ready to re-evaluate our
> policy. So I don't think you're going to see a "final" version
> ever. As long as the market moves and changes, our policy will be
> tweaked to accommodate what's happening.

In other words ... If we don't approve, it's time to go back to ITAR
and 40-bits.

> I don't think they're doing it just because the government asked them
> to; they're doing it because they see a market.  In addition, in the
> spring the FBI and the Justice Department asked companies to come in
> to see if a technical solution could be found to deal with these
> issues. Companies have done that, too.

It must be nice to be able to pressure and threaten companies behind
the scenes and then come out to the public to say that they are
"cooperating" or "volunteering".

> At the same time, of all the economic sectors in the country, this
> one's moving the fastest. There's a real danger that, if we can't get
> our policy together and out there in the marketplace soon, we could be
> overtaken by events overseas.

In other words, "all this time we've been denying that there was
overseas competition, well, we were lying through our teeth."

"And that thing with the EU complaining about Echelon and the Germans
trying to head up the Europeans to bust ITAR/EAR ..."  Oops!  Can't
say the "E" word in public because "nobody" knows about that!

> I think you have to contrast that situation, which was reasonably
> artificial, with the reality of law enforcement. In this case, it took
> a decent amount of resources to crack a specific message that, I
> believe, the people doing the crack knew was in English, and knew was
> one message.

Must be nice not having real technologists pointing out blatant
flaws/lies in your public statments.

> Now, if you're the FBI, think about that. From their standpoint, we're
> talking about traffic that isn't so easily identifiable. It might be a
> long stream of encrypted material that they're trying to intercept in
> real time; they don't necessarily know what language it's in; they
> don't necessarily know what

Sure ... if the FBI were really stupid ... and the FBI didn't really
want to do any homework, but instead, would rather have NSA's
dictionaries do the walking ...  encryption would be a real bitch,
wouldn't it?  Even 40-bit.

Ern