RIPA Part III

[Owen Lewis]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> [mailto:ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk]On Behalf Of Caspar Bowden
> Sent: 14 June 2006 20:36
> To: ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> Subject: RE: RIPA Part III
>
>
> >admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk] On Behalf Of Owen Lewis
> ..
> >>That's odd since HMG didn't launch their consultation until March 97
> or
> >>abandon escrow until 1999
>
> >Quite right, but only 2/10 because the point you seek to draw from
> those
> >facts is wrong. The white flag was flown in '97 with a request to
> parley.
>
> At the risk of knocking you down with a feather, please do chronicle
> this fascinating history here at length. So many times I remember being
> told that The Minister's mind was made up, the policy was firm, no
> further compromise, No.10 unshakeable. Silly me, and they were all along
> trying to parley.

Just once more. Through the early 90's, UKG was reluctant to abandon the
previous arrangement under which govt had once been  the single mass user of
cryptosystems and all others acquiring and using such systems did so under
conditions set by govt and of some greater or lesser stringency.  In '97 a
consultation was begun that would determine future policy recognition that a
continuation of current policy was both possibly not in the national
interest and in any event probably untenable in an open society. In short,
recognition of a need to change was a necessary pre-cursor to the
intelligent discussion of change. That no one seems to have told you this
should not have prevented you from deducing it for yourself

An interesting feature was that the necessity for change was *not* brought
about crypto lobbyists but by the IT revolution which, from the late 80's,
on had entered onto the steep part of the adoption curve.

> Please feel free to
> cite any standard works or papers on the subject.

:-) You put me in mind of 'Tomlinson'. A little work worth re-reading. In
case you do not know it, here's a snippet:

".....And Tomlinson took up the tale and spoke of his good in life.
"O this I have read in a book," he said, "and that was told to me,
"And this I have thought that another man thought of a Prince in Muscovy."
The good souls flocked like homing doves and bade him clear the path,
And Peter twirled the jangling Keys in weariness and wrath.
"Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought," he said, "and the tale is
yet to run:
"By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer-what ha' ye done?"
Then Tomlinson looked back and forth, and little good it bore,
For the darkness stayed at his shoulder-blade and Heaven's Gate before:-
"O this I have felt, and this I have guessed, and this I heard men say,
"And this they wrote that another man wrote of a carl in Norroway."
"Ye have read, ye have felt, ye have guessed, good lack! Ye have hampered
Heaven's Gate;
"There's little room between the stars in idleness to prate!
"For none may reach by hired speech of neighbour, priest, and kin
"Through borrowed deed to God's good meed that lies so fair within;
"Get hence, get hence to the Lord of Wrong, for thy doom has yet to
run....."

Owen