On Wednesday, May 1, 2002, at 09:27 AM, Trei, Peter wrote: > http://cbc.ca/stories/2002/04/30/elcock_terror020430 > > - start quote - > > In order to fight this threat, says Freeh, companies > such as Microsoft must be legally obligated to hand > over the keys needed to decipher encrypted > messages. He says it could prevent al-Qaeda from > maintaining encrypted communication over the > Internet. > > As for individual liberties, Freeh says it would be no > more of an infringement than a wire tap on a phone > line. > > - end quote - > > [Either Freeh is far more ignorant than he has > appeared in the past, or the journalist mangled > his quotes] >
Probably the latter. When I read this Freeh quote, I assumed his intent was to imagine a world in which "Microsoft supplies users with their keys," which is a corporate-centric world very much desired by many of the larger corporations. They would love to have an annual renewal fee, sort of like domain name annual fees. (Peter, probably even your own company is trying to figure out ways to get an annual license fee from your users. I'll bet doughnuts to dollars that there are working groups in your marketing department trying to devise schemes whereby RSA manages keys for corporations and users.) So long as users are free to generate and publish their own keys, Freeh's scenario is impossible. (The security flaws with "Oracle-issued" or "Microsoft-issued" keys are so enormous that no sane person would use them. However, the world is not filled with sane people.) The trend may be toward the corporate model. Filing of tax forms, submission of other forms, etc., is already creating demand for "official" signatures/certificates. (Like the fees paid to Verisign to get some bullshit certificate.) I hope even the Freehs of the world realize that the genie has long been out of the bottle, that Mohammed Atta would had many ways to communicate without having to use "MyYahooCrypto" back-doored schemes. --Tim May "Ben Franklin warned us that those who would trade liberty for a little bit of temporary security deserve neither. This is the path we are now racing down, with American flags fluttering."-- Tim May, on events following 9/11/2001
