Re: NRC panel wants questions for Law Enforcement on crypto policy

----- Forwarded message from David Lesher -----

>In April, gnu asked:
>> Herb Lin called today to ask if the Cypherpunks could come up with a
>> list of questions for their panel to ask the law enforcement community
>> about crypto policy.  They will be meeting with senior law enforcement
>> officials like FBI Director Freeh a week or so from now.
>
>Did we ever get any feedback on this?
>
>- -- 
>A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com
>& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
>Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
>is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

----- End of forwarded message from David Lesher -----

I'm glad you brought that up.  Having contributed some questions myself, I
was hoping to get some kind of feedback.  I didn't expect transcripts of any
top-secret meetings or anything, but the whole subject seems to have fallen
into a black hole; we don't even know whether the meetings ever took place.

If possible, it would be great to hear at least general reactions to at
least some of the questions and issues we raised.

John, did anything ever come of this?  Do you have any info at all?

					---  mkj

I collated all the questions into a large ungainly message and sent it
to Herb Lin.  He has been after me to go back over it and make a more
useful set of questions, which I haven't done yet.  He says they are
meeting with the FBI in September and want to get questions to them in
August (incorporating our ideas).  I've promised him I will get him the
formatted list of questions by the end of next week.

	John

| I collated all the questions into a large ungainly message and sent it
| to Herb Lin.  He has been after me to go back over it and make a more
| useful set of questions, which I haven't done yet.  He says they are
| meeting with the FBI in September and want to get questions to them in
| August (incorporating our ideas).  I've promised him I will get him the
| formatted list of questions by the end of next week.

	A question that might be interesting to add would be "Given
the intense difficulties in replacing the DES, why does Clipper have
an 80 bit key?  Wouldn't it make more sense to design a standard that
will at least resist brute force attacks for longer?"

	I understand there are difficulties in projecting computing
power that far ahead, as well as guessing at the actual improvement in
mathematical and cryptographic theory, but why not have a standard
with a 128 bit key?

Adam


-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume