Re: My chat with Goeff Greiveldinger

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 8:00 PM 10/15/95, Michael Froomkin wrote:
>I will be appearing with  Goeff Greiveldinger, he of the Justice Dept, at
>a discussion of commercial key escrow next Thursday in Bethesda.  Anyone
>with fun questions I should throw at him should contact me...
>
>Please note that the ostensible topic of this discussion is *commerical*
>key escrow, not Clipper per se, so I have to be diplomatic....

The question I have is this: Why is the Justice Department even involved at
all if it is truly only about _commercial_ key escrow?

(I have some speculations, of course, which I'll share in a minute.)

While commercial key escrow of course has legal implications, so do a lot
of things that I suspect the Justice Department has no interest in
discussing with anyone. And most of the implications of commercial key
escrow--if strongly voluntary in the sense we have discussed many times
here--are implications of _contract_ law that will get hashed out through
court cases.

So, why is the JD interested? Why would Mr. Greiveldinger of the JD be at a
discussion of commercial key escrow if in fact it is to be purely voluntary
and strongly voluntary?

Unless, of course, the JD has interests that go beyond mere privately
arranged contracts to hold keys in safety.

Or, I suppose, export control issues. (But then I think it unlikely that a
strongly voluntary system would be allowed to be exported. And since a
domestic version that is strongly voluntary would leak out almost
immediately, I think a domestic strongly voluntary CKE system is unlikely.)

I suspect Michael Froomkin can tell us why the JD is involved, what the
stated reason is, but I still find it "odd" that a purely voluntary
contractual arrangement between, say, "Thomas Paine" and "Ye Olde Keye
Repository" is generating interest by King George's legal officers.

--Tim May

Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government.
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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
Corralitos, CA              | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^756839      | black markets, collapse of governments.
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