On Thu, Feb 16, 2006 at 06:54:21PM +1300, Peter Gutmann wrote:
> "Steven M. Bellovin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> >According to the BBC, the British government is talking to Microsoft about
> >putting in a back door for the file encryption mechanisms.
> 
> That's one way of looking at it.  It's not really a backdoor, it's a way of
> spiking DRM.

This is exactly it. For years Western governments have been worried that
terrorists might build a secure distribution network for information and
orders, and now Hollywood is building one. A fake record label would be
a fantastic front for such a thing; each subscriber device (such as a PC
or mobile phone) can be uniquely identified, so when your agent
downloads the latest hit single he actually gets four minutes of orders
etc; nobody can tell from the outside, it's wiretap-resistant, the agent
can't have the key beaten out of him because he doesn't know it,
it's difficult and time-consuming to extract it from the device, and
because everyone has one it's quite hard to use traffic analysis alone
to pick out suspects.

There is no way Microsoft is going to build in a back door to Vista for
Special Branch - once they do that for one government and it becomes
known all hell breaks loose and they get banned from half their markets.
Some form of crazy overcomplicated key escrow system might happen; might
as well tie people's TCPA keys to their biometric identity cards, right?

Pete
-- 
Peter Clay                                   | Campaign for   _  _| .__
                                             | Digital       /  / | |
                                             | Rights!       \_ \_| |
                                             | http://www.ukcdr.org

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