Biological Warfare

I came up with an idea for fighting GAK.  Biological warefare.
This is a tried and true formula for war.
The Europeans used it to great effect against the Native Americans in the
form of Rabies and Smallpoxs.
The Europeans even used a form of it even earlier, throwing the rotting
corpses of dead horses into beseiged cities to spread desease.
The more modern chemical warefare has been used in both world wars and
possibly by Saddam Hussain during the Gulf War.
What I propose is a virus.
For GAK to work, there have to be lines of code in the encryption program to
give the government access.
It has been commented here that anyone who can get the source code can
comment those lines out.
Let's be frank, very few will have that option.
However, a software patch could be made that commented out the offending
code of any given product.  Perhaps also altering some visible part of the
program so that you know that your conversations are now secure.  Perhaps
the addition of a small ascii character to the corner of the screen.
The program that delivers the patch could be made in the form of a rather
innocuous computer virus.  Or, if you prefer, a worm.  This way, the program
can travel the same highways of silicon that the GAKked messages travel to
deGAK the software that it targets whenever it encounters it.
Give the software a relatively short lifespan, on the order of a year or so,
before all copies check thier date and decide to self destruct.  No need for
the virus if the software has been upgraded.  Then you'd need a new version
of the virus.

The project would be a large one as persons would have to get ahold of the
source.  Probably through decompiling it and figuring out what the now
undocumented source does at each step.  The actual virus would be easy to
code by comparison.
This should not preclude fighting the onset of GAK, rather the functional
incorporation of GAK.  What is the government going to do with 50,000
americans who have been using unGAKked software because they didn't know
that it had been infected?
Keep the visual clue as small as possible, maybe an extra period in a line
of periods.  That way an argument can be made for ignorance of the crime.
That is all.

At 2:43 PM -0700 9/17/97, Sean Roach wrote:
>I came up with an idea for fighting GAK.  Biological warefare.
>This is a tried and true formula for war.
>The Europeans used it to great effect against the Native Americans in the
>form of Rabies and Smallpoxs.
>The Europeans even used a form of it even earlier, throwing the rotting
>corpses of dead horses into beseiged cities to spread desease.
>The more modern chemical warefare has been used in both world wars and
>possibly by Saddam Hussain during the Gulf War.

While I support your general goals, the idea of releasing Sarin or anthrax
or other agents near the warrens of the burrowcrats in Washington is likely
to backfire. Although the rodent extermination might succeed, the rodents
have a prodigious ability to breed more of themselves. It's not clear that
calling in the Orkin man to rid the infestation in the Congress will
accomplish anything.

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

On Wed, Sep 17, 1997 at 03:47:47PM -0700, Tim May wrote:
[...]
> 
> While I support your general goals, the idea of releasing Sarin or anthrax
> or other agents near the warrens of the burrowcrats in Washington is likely
> to backfire. Although the rodent extermination might succeed, the rodents
> have a prodigious ability to breed more of themselves. It's not clear that
> calling in the Orkin man to rid the infestation in the Congress will
> accomplish anything.

As I am sure Tim is intelligent enough to realize, this argument also
applies to the "suitcase" option, and all the other fantasies of
righteous violence that float through this list. 

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html