Wired: Echelon Furor Ends in a Whimper

[Brian Gladman]

From: "Owen Lewis" <oml@eloka.demon.co.uk>
To: <ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2001 11:36 AM
Subject: RE: Wired: Echelon Furor Ends in a Whimper


[snip]
> > Should end-to-end encryption become universal as Brian suggests,
> > the question arises of what would be singular data for the NSA
> > and like-snoops to collect and retain? Will it be all communication,
> > along with burgeoning storage and sorting inventions such as NSA
> > brags it is feverishly developing (Bamford reports), or will other
> > characteristics be used to single out special data (and now used
> > to sort through increasing encrypted data)?
>
> The real problem with "universal end to end encryption" is that its
> universality must depend on:
>
> a. Universal adoption of a single PKC.
> b. Large public key holding sites where all the public keys for known
> 'universe' are held and can be freely accessed.

It was, I hope, clear from what I said that I was suggesting that all
information exchanges within a particular domain should be encrypted on an
end-to-end basis (I intended the domain to be Europe but some took the
domain to be global).

But at no time did I suggest that everyone in the domain in question should
be able to exchange encrypted information with everyone else in the domain.
This is an equally valid but different (and stronger) use of the term
'universal' than the one I employed.

And for my use of the term neither (a) nor (b) above is necessary (I don't
consider these as necessary for the stronger use of the term either but
that's another story).

    Brian