GAK & RSA

[hughes@ah.com (Eric Hughes)]

   the path towards a surveillance state, is it possible that the
   software GAK (SGAK) scheme could easily incorporate RSA's technology?

That depends on what you consider "RSADSI's technology".

First, there are the direct claims of the patents.  RSA and
Diffie-Hellman primarily.  The "public key" pattent of Hellman,
Merkle, Diffie is the knapsack, which doesn't work.  The Hellman,
Pohlig patent is for a method of exponentiation as a secret key
cipher.  These claims are not very arguable if you believe the
patents.  (And there's an 'if' there, too.)

But there's also the matter of patent extensions, the minor
modifications to the actual patents that are also covered.  I have
heard that RSADSI claims that all use of modular exponentiation for
cryptography are covered under their patents, as well as any public
key type system.

I think those claims are full of shit, myself, but that wouldn't stop
RSADSI from suing for infringement and arguing the case and turning
the attack from merit to one of lawyerdom.

Eric