Observer Leader calls for escrow

[Charles Lindsey]

	On Mon, 1 Oct 2001 23:16:52 +0100
	"Brian Gladman" <brg@gladman.plus.com> said...

> I agree that it won't but the 'logic' sometimes quoted by advocates is that
> criminals inevitably have to communicate with honest people at times so,
> while you can't get at 'criminal to criminal' encrypted messages through key
> escrow, this does allow messages between criminals and honest people to be
> obtained.

Yes, but the commonest case is where the criminal is interacting with
the Bank, and there are better ways to monitor what the Bank is up to
than trying to decode its money transfer protocols. Much easier to ask
them directly, using the powers of the Bankers Books Act (which, indeed,
may require some updating).

The only case where decryption of messages to honest people would be
required would be when you do not want the honest people to know what
you are up to. But that should be rare, because the honest people should
be willing to cooperate anyway. Moreover, you can usually get 95% of
what you want by traffic analysis.

Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133   Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
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