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Re: Notes from the SF Physical Cypherpunks meeting



Thanks to everyone who took the trouble to correct errors in my
notes from Saturday's Cypherpunks meeting. They were written
for my own benefit -- and for the benefit of some friends who
couldn't be there. Since I can give away information without
losing it (to misquote Thomas Jefferson), I'm happy to share it
with the cypherpunks.

A comment from Matts Kallioniemi might be worth some further discussion:

>>COM e-mail/bbs system (Sweden) -- operator could backup
>>e-mail, but not read it.
>
>Sure. The database was encrypted by using XOR with the string
>"KOM". That was the sorry state of encryption in the early eighties.
>

Encrypting the database with a fixed string offers a good example
of how "locks keep honest people honest." This would prevent an
operator from unintentionally reading a message in case it was
revealed by, perhaps, a disk sector editor or crash dump.

I suspect that the state of encryption in Sweden in the early
eighties was somewhat stronger than XOR (wasn't Hagelin a Swede who
moved to Switzerland to start Crypto AG?), but not necessarily
visible to the general public.

The Swedish government has a rather strong tradition of protection
of individual privacy (encrypting COM e-mail is one example).
For example, the initial Swedish implementation of a national
criminal database in the mid 1970's (equivalent to the US NCIC) used
dialback telexes to prevent unauthorized (and untracked) access.
A recent newspaper article noted that some police officers were
being investigated for unauthorized access to the personal information
of a collegue who had complained of sexual harassment.

Martin Minow
[email protected]