Re: CDT Policy Post 2.27 - No New News on Crypto: Gore Restates

[shamrock@netcom.com (Lucky Green)]

At 10:13 7/15/96, David Sternlight wrote:
[Oh boy. DS discovered Cypherpunks. Well, I guess it was only a matter of
time. You folks thought this list was active? Get ready for the onslaught.
Hi, David. :-]

>That's certainly one view. Another is that if you watch the precursors of
>legislation, then actions in the Netherlands, the UK, and in the European
>Parliament suggest that an independent European escrow initiative might
>happen within a year. When it does it will be a trivial matter to harmonize
>it with some US offering. The mills in various countries are grinding too
>coincidentally for my taste.
>
>Given the glacial pace with which standard integrated crypto has appeared
>on the Internet, with Navigator only going to offer the final
>link--encrypted e-mail--later this year, the above timing isn't necessarily
>one which will be left behind by independent Internet developments. And
>given the glacial pace of PGP movement toward integrated internet standard
>products, it hasn't a hope of beating the above timing to the punch.

David is correct. Strong crypto standardization and integration have made
little progress in the last two years. This is not about to change. In
fact, any standard that is likely to be widely agreed upon will be a weak
crypto standard. S/MIME with its 40 bit default key length is a prime
example.

Meanwhile, the governments in just about any country with an Internet
connection, certainly the governments in the US, Australia, and the EC are
marching in lock step to implement global GAK. There is not a single
significant market in the western world in which GAK is not either being
proposed, studied by pro-GAK "working groups", or already implemented. We
might see GAK nearly world wide within two years. The question isn't if GAK
will happen but only when it will happen. The speed by which GAK will
become the law depends on a few factors, many of which are out of our
control. Primarily, that means number and severity of Reichstag Fires the
GAK proponents can make use of to push their cause.

The odds seem slim that we will win the race to the mythical fork in the
road at which point crypto regulations will no longer matter, because
strong crypto is too widely deployed.



-- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred.
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