dejavu, Re: Hijackers' e-mails were unencrypted

[Ed Gerck]

"Jay D. Dyson" wrote:

> On Wed, 3 Oct 2001, Ed Gerck wrote:
>
> > With all due respect to the need to vent our fears, may I remind this
> > list that we have all seen this before (that is, governments trying to
> > control crypto), from key-escrow to GAK, and we all know that it will
> > not work -- and for many reasons.  A main one IMO is that it is simply
> > impossible to prevent anyone from sending an encrypted message to anyone
> > else except by controlling the receivers and the transmitters (as done
> > in WWII, for example).
>
>         Like you, I once believed that our government would follow
> sensible courses of action with respect to technology.  That time has
> passed.
>
>         The advent of DMCA should have served as a wake-up call to the
> reality that our government no longer even operates under the *pretense*
> of sanity or rationality with respect to technology laws.

My point is not that a government would not, but that a government
could not control the use of crypto.  It would not work.

My suggestion was that controlling routing and addresses would
be much more efficient and would NOT require new laws and
ersosion of communication privacy.

>And anyone who dares to insist that I'm being alarmist can go
>reverse engineer the latest commercial "security solution," publish the
>results, and see just how "free" they remain.

Maybe it's time to put sanity back into the DMCA crying.

In the infamous case of Microsoft vs. Stacker many years ago, when MS
was found guilty of using Stacker's code in a MS product, Stacker was
nonetheless found guilty of proving it by reverse engineering -- in a
notion similar to trespassing.

So, as stressed in that judicial case that predates DMCA, if I would get a
court order to reverse engineer the latest commercial "security solution"
and be allowed to publish the results, I would remain free and within
the legal limits. Otherwise, I would not -- DMCA or not.

Comments?

Cheers,

Ed Gerck




---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at wasabisystems.com