alternative to Fair Cryptosystems

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I'm slow reading my cp mail and saw a reference to Micali's Fair Cryptosystems
(what a name!).  There is a simple alternative -- also to Clipper.

You can have your surveillance agency (or agencies which need to cooperate)
publish their own RSA keys (big ones, presumably), and all the good little
boys and girls who want to prove how obedient and conformist they are can
include those keys as recipients when they encrypt messages.  If there are
to be multiple agencies which have to cooperate, the PGP or RIPEM software
would have to change to split the message key by XOR with ranno pieces,
but in the meantime, you could just include the FBI in your list of recipients
and save everybody the hassle of having to get pieces to put together.

Simple -- direct -- speaks right to the gov't desire.  What could be wrong
with this?

 - Carl


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Carl Ellison:
> all the good little
> boys and girls who want to prove how obedient and conformist they are can
> include those [TLA] keys as recipients when they encrypt messages...what
> could be wrong with this?

Would the "boys and girls" with this choice be the users or the comm
equipment manufacturers?  If the users, the system would become that
much more user hostile (already a big barrier to common use of crypto).
If the manufacturers, the system would not be practically different from 
today's, where manufacturers are free to choose their encryption method 
but get leaned on by the government in various ways to use weak methods.

Nick Szabo					szabo@netcom.com