Re: a cryptographic deal with the devil

[efrem@spitha.informix.com (Efrem Lipkin)]

>Re. the digital wiretapping "compromise."  As a telecom professional I
>absolutely resent and will resist any attempts to mandate backdoors into my
>PBXs.  No compromise on that.  Period.  We've all heard the arguements many
>times: vast surveillance power, diminution of privacy, potential major
>security problems...  

I think you missed the point of my proposal. It is to create a situation
in which all taps must be court ordered and eventually disclosed. 
The police have no business making "investigational" taps, they are
not entrepreneurs in search of new business opportunities.

My prefered solution is no taps. In my experience taps are more common
for political reasons than police reasons. I think anyone who believes
anything the FBI says without proof must have not been reading the paper
for the last several decades.

If the political process will not ban wire (fiber) tapping then it seems 
sensible to try and force all easedropping into the public record.

I see no reason to care where the police put their equipment so long as 
there is no way they can create taps without going to court and creating 
a public record. I do not see the difference between building the tap
in or making it an extra cost option, unless it can be made a very expensive
option. If tap control cannot be reliably accomplished via technology, 
cryptographic or otherwise, then we might as well just fight against 
all tapping and for universal encryption even if it is a lost cause.

I think it is clear that no organization and especially no government or
corporation can be trusted to police itself either at the frontdoor or
the backdoor.

--efrem