Re: Doctor Denning

Peter Monta   pmonta@qualcomm.com wrote:
>What I found interesting was the lack of meat behind
>"Crypto Anarchy is Not Inevitable".  It seemed to boil
>down to the vacuous "if everyone could just agree that key
>escrow is a good thing, there would be no problem".

If found this interesting too.  I was waiting for the reason it wasn't
inevitable but it never came.  Denning seems willing to predict a future
where there are no more technical advances in fields like steganography and
dc nets.  

Besides, won't the penalty for communicating using non-government
approved methods be life in prison?  What you are hiding *may* be evidence
of a murder or that you are a drug kingpin.  Unless the penalty is worse 
than that for being convicted of the crime you commited, criminals will use 
non-approved crypto and benefit greatly from it.  

I don't think the public will buy this type of sentencing. Remailer
operators will be sentenced to life once unapproved crypto goes through
their system, even stego.  ISP managers will have to go to jail too if
they let 1 non-government approved message slip though. 

If this is the way it is enforced it will be too easy to set up ISPs and 
remailer operators.  All the big on-line services could be targetted 
too.  You don't like AOL?  Just sign up using one of their handy disks 
and the CC# you just scammed out of a dumpseter.  Don't forget to use a 
payphone! Post non-GAKed crypto messages to usenet from AOL with cool 
subjects like, "Here is where to leave the money." and "#43r5637 to 
#4847d66".  I don't see how enforcement is workable.
 


      Weld Pond   -  weld@l0pht.com        -   http://www.l0pht.com/
      L  0  p  h  t    H  e  a  v  y    I  n  d  u  s  t  r  i  e  s          
      Technical archives for the people  -  Bio/Electro/Crypto/Radio

On Fri, 26 Jan 1996, Weld Pond wrote:

> If found this interesting too.  I was waiting for the reason it wasn't
> inevitable but it never came.  Denning seems willing to predict a future
> where there are no more technical advances in fields like steganography and
> dc nets.  
Or for that matter that the present ones will never get implemented.

Poor prof Denning...It strikes me as though her essay is a close 
relative of "Reefer Madness", a supposedly hilariously rabid (I'm told)
anti-pot video which only potheads ever bother watching. The only people
who will read her webpage are us cypherpunks. Should by some 
randomly-generated act of pot luck, anyone other than us read her ~38 pg.
rant, that person (non-LEA, of course) will probably be entertained enough
to join the list and read Tim's writings (only a search engine away).

It is also convenient that most of the search engines list multiple 
occurences of the list archives, every time a search on cryptography
keywords is performed. (The archives don't list the majordomo address, could 
this be the reason why we constantly get so many "subscribe me!" posts? 
Waaay to go Dorothy!)

Somehow, I don't think her choice of medium is going to get her very far.
I wonder what a second edition of her crypto book would look like.