At 08:57 PM 10/30/01 -0500, vertigo commended to our attention: >http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/chaffing.txt
Here is a review I wrote back in 1998: 1) In Ron's note, most of the statements about the technology are true. In a narrowly technical sense the scheme would "work". 2) The scheme is not as revolutionary as the note seems to suggest. Hiding trees in forests is pretty well-known technology. 3) The legal and definitional aspects are, shall we say, matters of opinion. In particular, the claim that chaffing is not encryption is highly debatable. Certainly the authorities could choose to include chaffing in the list of banned operations. The fact that all the ingredients of the chaffing scheme have "approved" uses falls far short of making the point. Consider an analogy: in many cases the parts of a legal semi-automatic weapon are essentially identical to the parts of a fully-automatic weapon. Yet the authorities have no hesitation about outlawing the latter -- and vigorously enforcing the law. 4) It should go without saying that I do NOT approve of wholesale snooping. Indeed I think the present restrictions on cryptography are absurd. And I don't think there's anything wrong with chaffing. I just don't think it will be particularly effective at forcing the debate into sensible channels. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
