Re: Public vs. Private Munitions

[Jeremey Barrett <jeremey@forequest.com>]

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Hrm... that should foster communication. So lemme see if I understand your
point... everyone in the U.S needs to devise their own cryptosystem,
and then use it to communicate securely. To who? Since I can't publish
my system for fear the government will find it out and then restrict it,
noone else will know about it. I can have a good old time encrypting stuff
to myself, but that's about it. And the likelihood that I'm an expert
cryptographer in order to design a good system is pretty remote.

On Sat, 27 Jul 1996, Erle Greer wrote:

> Here's how I understand it:
>      The U.S. Government, concerned only with making America a safer place
> for us taxpayers to live in, wants to regulate domestic encryption in order
> to have access to the content of all transmissions.  Their theory is that
> any cryptosystem that is stronger than their cryptanalysis systems can be
> used in illegal transmissions and should be considered munitions.
>      Theoretically, the government should only be have the resources to
> control commercially-available, public encryption systems.  Who is to stop
> anyone from designing their own cryptosystem for personal use?  If the
> government intercepted a transmission from this private cryptosystem, and
> could not decrypt it, would they assume that it must be considered
> munitions?  Similarly, anyone could send uniformly-formatted random garble
> that could also be considered munitions, or at least waste the governments
> processing time.
>      Why are we so worried about government regulation?  Can't we just
> devise our own cryptosystems and just don't sell them or make them publicly
> available?
> 

- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jeremey Barrett
Senior Software Engineer			jeremey@forequest.com 
The ForeQuest Company       			http://www.forequest.com/

   "less is more."
		-- Mies van de Rohe.

   Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design.  Unlike most
   automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the
   numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver.  Rather, if the
   driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the
   dashboard.  "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know
   what's wrong."

		-- 'fortune` output

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