Gilder on CDA, Crypto Export, DES, and Financial Cryptography

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

It's nice to see that the clueful memes are spreading, Gilder's congenital
statism aside :-).

Also from http://www.computer.org/internet/9701/gilder9701.htm .



> Petrie: While we're on the subject of choice, what do you think about the
> First Amendment issues currently before the Supreme Court concerning the
> use of legislation to block the viewing of pornography on the Internet?
>
> Gilder: My belief is that you don't have to change the laws to deal with
> the child pornography or snuff films or other extreme cases that are
> employed to justify sweeping regulation of the Net. I think they're a
> distraction, they're a red herring. My 12-year-old son is on the Net all
> the time and I'm eager for the evolution of techniques applicable at the
> terminal to lock out certain domains of the Internet to children. But I
> think that porn of sufficiently revolting character is widespread all over
> the society. If the politicians want to crack down, how about the
> Spectravision boxes in every hotel room?
>
> To focus on the Internet bespeaks another agenda. And I don't
> approve of the other agenda, which is to control this new communication
> system, because the way they controlled the old one has been a disaster--it
> has greatly slowed the extension of bandwidth and led to this kind of
> optical illusion, or nonoptical illusion, that bandwidth is somehow scarce
> and difficult to create.
>
> Petrie: This also reminds me of the paranoia about security on the
> Internet. For example, online banking on the Internet requires you to have
> a US-grade security browser, a user ID, and a password to access the same
> service you can use three digits to access by telephone.
>
> Gilder: I completely agree with that observation. There is a paranoid note
> in this encryption and privacy issue. But I think corporations do have a
> real problem. If you're sending billions of dollars of value across the
> Net, you've created a huge incentive for people to break your codes and
> skim off some small proportion of your value flow.
>
> Petrie: But we're not talking about financial transactions. Those have been
> secured for quite some time.
>
> Gilder: But how? They're using the DES (data encryption standard) algorithm
> which is a fairly low level of encryption employed by banks for
> transmitting funds. I know it works--I really don't agree with the thesis
> that the Internet is insecure--however, I'm willing to imagine there are
> applications where you want more security than currently exists. But we are
> talking about a lot of issues here all at once. The encryption issue about
> terrorism, for example. Banning strong encryption in order to thwart
> terrorists means that only terrorists will have strong encryption. I really
> think that's accurate--or at least only foreign countries will be able to
> have encryption. So the encryption technology will tend to move overseas
> where it's completely beyond the reach of US security.
>
> I think the government's going to figure out that they want the best
> encryption to be American. And to disagree with the current wisdom, there
> is an arms race. The arms race is with the terrorists. There's no question
> about it. But there is no quick technical fix for this arms race. The
> government has to understand this is a dynamic rather than a static arms
> race, and you won't be able to solve the problem by treaty. The problem is
> that of evil in the world, and it's something all of us, including people
> who want a wild and woolly Internet, depend on our government to address.


-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"Never attribute to conspiracy what can be
explained by stupidity." -- Jerry Pournelle
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/rah/