Re: No SKE in Daytona and other goodies

From: Aron Freed

What is the difference if a big company subjects its employees to a
key-escrow system or if the government does it with the people. If you
think about it, the government could coerce the company into reading
through information being passed back and forth....
.................................................

With a private company, you can negotiate with the owners, or leave.
With the government, you have no choice.
If the governors decide to coerce a company into complicity with 
surveillance over internal correspondence, it can do this anyway by 
other means  - that is, it can get access over any material it deems 
necessary for "legitimate law enforcement needs", even hard-copy files.

The desire for absolute control isn't limited to governments, and it 
doesn't originate in the institution, but in the psychology of the beholder.

Blanc

> What is the difference if a big company subjects its employees to a
> key-escrow system or if the government does it with the people. If you
> think about it, the government could coerce the company into reading
> through information being passed back and forth....
> .................................................
> 
> With a private company, you can negotiate with the owners, or leave.
> With the government, you have no choice.


There is an additional difference which I believe has been implicit in
most of the discussion on this issue:  When we talk about a company
escrowing the keys of its employees, we mean the company escrows the keys
of encrypted communications used *for company business and on "company
time"*, not necessarily all keys utilized for all communications by the
employees.  I suppose a company could try to restrict its employees further,
but as Blanc notes, you can leave the company a lot easier than you can
leave the country.


-- Jeff