NYC Crypto Forum Add

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

A supplement to the NYC Crypto Forum:

Toward the end Nesson asked, "How about the missing
participant here, NSA?"

Several panelists noted, "NSA's here, in the audience."
(Nonesuch spoke, however.)

Nesson went on to ask, "What about national security
interests outweighing the right to privacy?"

It was here that David Kahn offered his defense of key
recovery.

Farber and others responded that the problem is that
the government is not trusted, that guards against
abuse of power have not worked, that national security
too often has been a cloak for illicit actions.

Here, an audience member said that he worked at Salomon
Brothers doing traffic analysis of vast E-mail, and that we
should be aware that more electronic snooping is going on 
than most people know. How could we be sure that law
enforcement would not similarly abuse systems set up to
catch criminals for other purposes, as NSA allegedly does, 
and, now using the same methodolgies, as private companies 
do to spy on employees, customers and competitors.

All panelists nodded at this, that it's hard to tell god from
the devil, and crypto won't help.