[Cryptography] Came up with a weird use case, got questions

[james hughes]

> On Jan 5, 2019, at 8:40 PM, Joshua Marpet <joshua.marpet at guardedrisk.com> wrote:
> Any systems out there which will auto-decrypt, not based on a clock (which can be spoofed), but instead based on an event, a piece of information, a trusted info source? Something like the Long Now foundation's clock?

This is not weird at all, US Census has exactly that requirement. They have a law that requires all the census responses  be secret for 70 years and then public after that. 

There is no clock based system that I know of that does not require a trusted third party or a trusted group of third parties. 

The group idea would be similar to the NIST Beacon <https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Presentations/The-NIST-Randomness-Beacon/images-media/day2_demonstration_1100-1150pt1.pdf> (which is offline at the moment due to government shutdown) that has similar services in Chile <https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiAo6ym5dnfAhWC_p8KHaMtD34QFjADegQIBxAB&url=https://beacon.clcert.cl/&usg=AOvVaw3RvRIynvzWS-KJpSZBJ-VV> and maybe Brazil <http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6396/1383>.  The idea would be to use SSS to break up the key in m of n and send n pieces to different time escrow services with a statement to release in 100 years. As long as m do not collude to release the secret, the secret is safe. As long as n-m continue to operate in 100 years, your secret will be released. 

Less likely ideas would be to: 
Encrypt with 1024 bit RSA and in 100 years it “should” be easily breakable. Ditto for AES 128. 
Put the key on a rocket that will take 100 years to make a specific flight. 
Use a radio to bounce a signal off a star 50 light years away.

Jim
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