Inaccurate study quoting, Re: anti-crypto rhetoric (Ellison,

[Carl Ellison]

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At 09:23 AM 4/6/98 -0700, Paul Leyland wrote:
>Carl observed:
>> that might apply if strong crypto were automatic: eg., end-to-end for all 
>> telephone calls.  
>
>That was my premise  8-)

Yes, I understood that and I'm not claiming that you believe it.  It's just
that I don't often enough pipe up with the observation that this is the
false premise on which the FBI's chain of logic is based.


>I wrote:
>> >Not necessarily true.  If strong cryptography is ubiquitous, even the
>
>You are quite right: we are not there yet.  I believe some Three Letter
>Agencies fear that we may get there before they are ready for the changed
>environment.

I know that's their fear -- but if they were in the commercial crypto 
business they'd realize that it's like pulling teeth to get people to buy 
and use crypto.  That's why ubiquitous crypto is nonsense.  We'll never see it.

Think of the phone system.  To get end-to-end crypto we'd have to replace 
all phones in existence with encrypting phones.  Just agreeing on a standard 
for that would take longer than the lifetime of the cryptosystem chosen for 
that standard :) ....  Once that standard is agreed, it would take *many* 
years (probably multiple decades) before all phone instruments were replaced.

As for the software, crypto prevents access if the user isn't careful -- and 
users won't put up with that.  They want access, not security.

No, I think we should remain on the alert for any logical thread that starts 
out assuming ubiquitous crypto -- and stop the thread right there.

As a co-worker of mine once noted, the US Administration should have kept 
its mouth shut when AT&T planned to introduce the DES phone.  AT&T would 
have sold 5 and that division would have gone out of business for lack of a 
market.  Instead, the Administration crammed Clipper down AT&T's throat and
alerted the world to the government threat against privacy -- and crypto
got its biggest boost ever.

 - Carl

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