John Young writes:
> What's intriguing is whether PECSENC, now headed by an ex-NSA
> honcho, is going to bite NSA's sigint bullet, and recommend that
> strong encryption is better for the public interest than natsec snooping,
> what with the world now getting its hands on means of strong protection
> for conventional telecommunications of text and to a lesser extent
> voice.
I'll go out on a limb and speculate that the NSA will eventually be a
proponent of strong crypto. Why? Because the weak-crypto crowd
essentially operates as a cartel. A cartel is built of all interested
parties (e.g. oil producers in OPEC). They all agree to refrain from
behavior which would be advantagous if only a minority did it, but
which is harmful if everyone did it (e.g. competing in a free
market). In the case of economic producers, that means reducing
production and raising prices.
Of course, you can't deny the free market. It's like a balloon --
press in on it, and it presses out somewhere else. If you succeed in
containing it, it pushes back hard everywhere. Now that prices are
higher, you have two problems: new entrants have to be incorporated
into the cartel, and current entrants have a strong incentive to
cheat. These problems are bad enough that only one cartel has
survived in the long run: the deBeers diamond cartel. Remember the
new diamond fields in Canada and Russia discovered earlier this
decade? They were brought into the cartel (IIRC). They had to be,
otherwise the cartel would fall. This works because people have been
persuaded that diamonds are precious, worth paying very high prices.
There's lots of room in the diamond cartel.
Is it obvious now how this applies to the crypto market? If everyone
is forced to use weak crypto, all governments can spy on all
others.[1] But now that PC's are cheap and strong crypto is widely
available, governments have a harder time enforcing weak crypto
(presuming they want to). As their citizens and corporations defect,
the remaining cartel members lose the advantage of decrypting the
defectors, and have a shorter lever to control their own citizens and
corporations.
At some point there will be enough defectors to bring down the cartel.
Once we break the dam, the NSA, being a responsible government
institution, must advocate strong crypto in order to protect its
mission. Because, their mission is to gain an advantage over other
countries through sigint. If their policies create an obvious
disadvantage (US crypto can be broken, but nobody else's can), then
they'll be changed.
And when the dam breaks, you'll see an amazing flip-flop. You'll need
a seat belt on your computer chair to keep from falling on the floor.
[1] There are secret trade shows where wiretapping equipment is sold.
You need a clearance and a photo badge to attend. I've never been,
but I expect that the same, or similar, trade shows sell DES-breaking
equipment. Particularly when it's cheaper than five hum-vees.
--
-russ nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://crynwr.com/~nelson
Crynwr supports Open Source(tm) Software| PGPok | Government schools are so
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