Re: How would Leahy bill affect crypto over HAM radio?

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

At 04:21 PM 3/12/96 +0000, Deranged Mutant wrote:
>Jim Bell wrote:

>But it's more than breaking an agreement. If you voluntarily escrow 
>your key (as with a corporation) and the holder is bribed to give it 
>to a competitor, it may be more worth the holder's while to break a 
>contract for the dollars the competitor may bribe him with.  It makes 
>sense to have some criminal punishments for that.

Well, okay, but we've really got to define whose key is being escrowed, 
anyway.  Most corporations will probably handle it themselves, OR they will 
only give an ENCRYPTED escrowed key to the escrow agent.  This would prevent 
the escrow agent from disclosing the key without authorization.  Naturally, 
this raises the question, "who will escrow the key to the escrow," but then 
again, I think most individual citizens wouldn't trust anyone else with 
their key anyway.  

I think that where it is unnecessary to keep a key, such as a 
crypto telephone, no such key should be kept, certainly not "permanently."  
A crypto phone could simply generate a new public key for each phone call, 
verified with a permanent key to foil MITM attacks (but the permanent key 
won't be used to transmit actual voice data) and the temporary public key 
erased and replaced after the call ends.  Siezing the telephone would be 
useless because it would contain no information that would help resurrect 
the phone call data.

>Yes. In all areas of gov't. I'm all for the death penalty for 
>prosecutors who push for the d.p. on people they know are innocent, 
>for instance.  It'll never happen (at least not in our lifetimes), 
>but it makes plenty of sense to me.

Hey, I'm working on it!  I assume you've read my essay...


>> 2.  Hams drive technology (although admittedly that it's really so true 
>> anymore, either.)
>
>Internet to Ham links, though?  There's some technical drive there. 
>It's just plateaued.

I look with a little disappointement on packet radio.  I tried it once, but at 1200 
bps (simplex, and the "real" data transfer rate is far lower than even this 
number would imply) it simply isn't a practical method of transmitting large 
quantities of data.  Even the more modern 9600 bps packet modems are 
probably not a lot better.  Microwave links can handle far more, but few 
people are in the right spot for such a link.  The main hope, I think, is 
satellite-based Internet service, perhaps included in something like that 
DSS service.  It could easily handle far more than the current volume for 
USENET, for example.  That's not ham-level territory, however.  Few hams do 
microwave, even fewer do anything other than straight FM or AM.  The only 
microwave thing I've done is build a homebrew 36 GHz Gunn oscillator module, 
which raises a few eyebrows even among seasoned microwave hams, because not 
only isn't 36 GHz a ham band (It's Ka band radar, the kind they use for 
photo radar) few microwave hams dare go above K band (24.125 Ghz) and most stay at 
X-band.  (10-10.5 GHz).


>> But what law giveth, law can also taketh away.  A few years ago, a 2-MHz 
>> portion of the 220-225 MHz ham ban (220-222 MHz) was taken away and given to 
>> UPS, yes, UNITED PARCEL SERVICE.  Ostensibly, the reason was that hams 
>> weren't using it adequately, a claim which might or might not have been true.
>
>Who did UPS donate campaign funds to?

I wish I knew!  "Fortunately" (though some hams would disagree) the FCC 
implemented a Morse-code-less license a few years back, which I hope will 
bring much larger numbers of hams into the hobby, and I think already has 
had a serious effect. (I became a ham in 1986, more than a decade after I 
had all the electronics skills to pass the "technical" section, delayed simply 
because I didn't appreciate being forced to use an archaic method to 
transmit data.  I finally developed enough ham friends that I felt a bit 
left out, so I spent a couple of weeks learning Morse.  I never use it.)

This should have substantially increased the number of hams and their 
political clout, which should keep the current spectrum allocations secure 
for a while.

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com