Re: Netscape plans to support GAK

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

Robert Hettinga wrote:

>Yup. Looks like Barksdale(?) was right in his Pro-Excrow comments two years
>ago in Boston after all.
>
>Mr. Weinstein's Black Rhino Ammunition Inc. "Mr. Kevlar" award went for
>naught, I'm afraid...

While it might be too touchy for Netscaper cryptographers to address
openly, I wonder if there is not a scheme afoot to go along with the 
current restrictions in order to be better positioned to compete with 
others intending to launch robust encryption as soon as the leak in the 
dam globally breaks.

There may be more to this story than appears in the PR of
industry and government. The crypto fight may be a diversion.

Suppose the governments intend to relax crypto restrictions 
once other technologies to monitor electronic transactions are
in place and and enforcers have been trained to snare illegal 
transactors based on physical evidence of crime beyond the
digital. 

Recall that that's what Peter Neumann and others on the NRC 
crypto panel suggested as an agenda for the FBI to forego undue
crypto emphasis.

Is it not possible that the US and other nations will allow strong
encryption so long as other means are at hand to control any
action merely cloaked in encrypted language, as has been done
forever with stylistic literature and speech?

To, as with its predecessors, tolerate the artist of cryptoanarchy 
but guillotine the actor.