NYT article on steganography

[John Denker]

At 08:57 PM 10/30/01 -0500, vertigo commended to our attention:

>http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/chaffing.txt

Here is a review I wrote back in 1998:

1) In Ron's note, most of the statements about the technology are true.  In 
a narrowly technical sense the scheme would "work".

2) The scheme is not as revolutionary as the note seems to suggest.  Hiding 
trees in forests is pretty well-known technology.

3) The legal and definitional aspects are, shall we say, matters of 
opinion.  In particular, the claim that chaffing is not encryption is 
highly debatable.  Certainly the authorities could choose to include 
chaffing in the list of banned operations.  The fact that all the 
ingredients of the chaffing scheme have "approved" uses falls far short of 
making the point.  Consider an analogy:  in many cases the parts of a legal 
semi-automatic weapon are essentially identical to the parts of a 
fully-automatic weapon.  Yet the authorities have no hesitation about 
outlawing the latter -- and vigorously enforcing the law.

4) It should go without saying that I do NOT approve of wholesale 
snooping.  Indeed I think the present restrictions on cryptography are 
absurd.  And I don't think there's anything wrong with chaffing.  I just 
don't think it will be particularly effective at forcing the debate into 
sensible channels.




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