On Monday, April 1, 2002, at 12:09 PM, Marcel Popescu wrote: > > I advocate secure messaging using very strong public keys, > in combination with moderately strong session keys. > > This prevents casual easedropping by unintended recipents, > without jeapardizing national and international security.
Those who voluntarily use weak keys are seldom the persons sought by national governments. So the issue is whether use of weak keys will be mandated by governments. And for those who are (perhaps temporarily) of the frame of mind that the U.S. Government is not the Enemy, remember the very, very long list of governments and similar entities that have oppressed people. It's useful to remember that the use of "moderately strong" (= weak) keys by freedom fighters in Burma, Rhodesia, Romania, the former and pressent USSR/whatever, and at many times in the past (and current) history of the U.S. would have exposed these freedom fighters to arrest, torture, imprisonment, and death. Since I haven't published my "Enemies of the State" list in a while, here it is again: (I sent this out about 10 days before 9/11, so the reference to UBL/OBL is perhaps ironic. Doesn't change a word of what I wrote, though.) Many of those who have been quibbling about whether "freedom fighters" are terrorists, or whether Osama bin Laden is or is not a FF, etc., are MISSSING THE BIG PICTURE. Take the long view, the more agnostic view. Whether one likes the actions of bin Laden or Pablo Escobar or James Jesus Angleton is not the point Privacy and untraceability tools will be used by many who are seeking to evade others. Some we are taught in American schools are heroes, some we are taught are villains. Here's a list I distributed some years ago at a CFP Conference: (the paper is still available at Prof. Froomkin's site, http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/tcmay.htm ) Appendix: Who are those Bad Guys, anyway? Depending on which nation one is in, which regime is in power, and other factors, here are some of the enemies of the people the laws against strong crypto and the banning of digital cash are intended to crush: Enemies of the People, the opposition party, the Resistance, friends of the Bad Guys, family members of the Bad Guys, conspirators, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, atheists, heretics, schismatics, heathens, leftists, rightists, poets, authors, Turks, Armenians, Scharansky, Solzhenitsyn, refuseniks, Chinese dissidents, students in front of tanks, Branch Davidians, Scientologists, Jesus, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, African National Congress, UNITA, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, colonial rebels, patriots, Tories, Basque separatists, Algerian separatists, secessionists, abolitionists, John Brown, draft opponents, communists, godless jew commies, fellow travellers, traitors, capitalists, imperialist lackeys, capitalist roaders, anarchists, monarchists, Charlie Chaplin, Galileo, Joan of Arc,, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, civil rights workers, Students for a Democratic Society, Weathermen, Margaret Sanger, birth control activists, abortionists, anti-abortionists, Michael Milken, Robert Vesco, Marc Rich, Nixon's Enemies, Hoover's enemies, Clinton's enemies, Craig Livingstone's high school enemies, Republicans, Democrats, labor organizers, corporate troublemakers, whistleblowers, smut peddlers, pornographers, readers of "Playboy," viewers of images of women whose faces are uncovered, Amateur Action, Jock Sturges, violators of the CDA, alt.fan.karla-homulka readers, Internet Casino customers, Scientologists, Rosicrucians, royalists, Jacobins, Hemlock Society activists, Jimmy Hoffa, John L. Lewis, Cesar Chavez, opponents of United Fruit, land reformers, Simon Bolivar, Robin Hood, Dennis Banks, American Indian Movement, Jack Anderson, Daniel Ellsberg, peace activists, Father Berrigan, Mormons, Joseph Smith, missionaries, Greenpeace, Animal Liberation Front, gypsies, diplomats, U.N. ambassadors, Randy Weaver, David Koresh, Ayotollah Khomeini, John Gotti, Papists, Ulstermen, IRA, Shining Path, militia members, tax protestors, Hindus, Sikhs, Lech Walesa, Polish labor movement, freedom fighters, revolutionaries, Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, and "suspects". --Tim May "That government is best which governs not at all." --Henry David Thoreau
