[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: Symantec's Your Eyes Only
jim bell <[email protected]> wrote:
>At 11:57 AM 7/16/96 -0400, Clay Olbon II wrote:
>
>>Now my $.02. I am concerned about the lack of a distinction between
>>transient communications and stored data. This is apparent in the GAK
>>proposals, but is also increasingly apparent in mainstream corporate
>>products such as this one and ViaCrypt BE. It is apparent (to me anyway)
>>that corporate access to stored data (data owned by the company, on
>>machines owned by the company) is probably necessary. I do not see this
>>same need for access to transient communications. Am I way off base on
>>this one?
>
>
>This has been mentioned a number of times by various people. It should be
>obvious that it is pointless to escrow the key of a data stream that you
are
>not recording, such as a telephone conversation. Also, if you have no
>permanent need for that data (also, the telephone conversation) it is
>unnecessary. As might be expected, however, the proponents of GAK don't
>distinguish between keys for storage and keys for communication.
>
>Such an oversight is predictable. It's likely that governments will be
>more
>interested in keys for communication, because the data is far more easily
>(and secretly) accessible. Were they to admit that nobody has a need for
>his own communication data key, they'd lose a substantial fraction of
their
>target data.
>
My point was not that govts want to escrow communication keys, it was that
this is appearing more and more in commercial products marketed to
businesses. I run the computer system for a small office and I would
rather not see employee email - maybe I am just naive. However, there
obviously is a demand for this type of product. It must come from either a
lack of understanding of crypto, or a freeh-style authoritarianism on the
part of corporate executives. I wouldn't rule either one out. If it is
the latter, I'm not sure there is anything we can do.
Clay
***************************************************************************
Clay Olbon II * [email protected]
Systems Engineer * PGP262 public key on web page
Dynetics, Inc. * http://www.msen.com/~olbon/olbon.html
***************************************************************** TANSTAAFL