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At 01:34 PM 6/25/99 -0700, Tom Weinstein wrote:
> I think your view only makes sense if you are only
> interested in protecting yourself against entities who have
> $100,000 (or $50,000, or whatever) to build a DES cracking
> machine.
You assume that most businessmen are confident that all their
activities are legal. Most businessmen are not confident of
this, and any businessman who is confident of this, is living
in a fool's paradise.
While 40 bits is doubtless adequate to protect credit card
numbers, it is not satisfactory for internal business
discussions.
> Despite your contempt for Netscape and Microsoft, they do,
> in fact, sell strong crypto products where they are able
> to. If the CEOs of these companies went to their boards of
> directors and told them that they were going blow off the
> entire international market because they didn't want to put
> export grade crypto into their products, they'd be out of
> their jobs faster than you could say "stockholder lawsuit."
PGP neither crippled its product, nor did it blow off the
export market. Instead it vigorously worked around the
existing laws. Microsoft has made some effort to get around
these laws, but seemed to lose interest. Perhaps Bill Gates
was the recipient of a little talk. Netscape does not seem
to have made any effort to get around these laws.
--digsig
James A. Donald
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