Of course the German government will submit to US demands. Understand that
at present, crypto isn't an immediate thread to USG's interests, despite the
claims to the contrary by both crypto advocates and the government.
The US and its allies have made certain that virtually every piece of
mass-market infrastructure has a tappable section built in. Do a search on
"crypto" at the ETSI standards documents homepage and you'll realize just
how severely the communication infrastructure has been corrupted. Other
examples abound.
At present, the crypto strategy of the USG centers on a lot of persuasion
(with limited success), expert navigation of the political process (with
significantly better success, see the rubber-stamping of Wassenaar by
virtually all European delegates), and comparatively little open
intimidation.
As crypto becomes more of a real-life problem to information gathering, the
US and other governments starting to clue in as to what crypto means to
their very existence will lead to the deployment of bigger guns. It may take
a decade or more, but the governments will succeed in outlawing the use of
strong crypto in mass market products that don't provide tappable
communication link segments. Most of you probably know the following, but
just in case somebody doesn't, tappable segments include all communications
involving at least one heavily-regulated party.
If one was to doubt that the German government will become a stalwart
supporter of domestic crypto controls, just imaging what will happen once
the US representative shows the German Economics Minister the video tape of
the Minister and the 6 year old. Oh, you didn't know about the Economics
Minister butt-fucking a 6 year old boy while the boy was forced to suck off
the Chancellor? Well, chances are neither do the Minister or the Chancellor,
but both most definitely know what will happen once that tape hits the
media. They also know that nobody but a few extremists would ever believe
that somebody faked the tape. Consequently, the German government will lick
the boot that kicked them. When it comes down to pure survival, there are no
rules.
The truth is, which is what Cypherpunks had been about since the beginning,
that widespread use of strong crypto is fundamentally incompatible with
majority rule, the operations of modern democracies, and the long-term
requirements of maintaining a nation state.
Either strong crypto has to go or the above forms of government have to go.
There are no alternatives. I know that, most old-timers in the field know
that, and perhaps most importantly, the more forward-looking governments
know that. Case in point, the US government is painfully aware of that fact.
Which is why it has been pushing so hard to implement CALEA and GAK. Ideally
on a global basis. In the medium term, which most likely includes the
lifetime of the readers of this post, the above mentioned facts will cause
strong crypto to not become widely deployed for general purpose end-to-end
encryption.
[Before a reader replies with an argument based on a claim that strong
crypto is in the process of becoming ubiquitous, please take a look at your
phone. Does it perform 3DES encryption? Do the phones of the majority of
people you call perform 3DES encryption? Alternatively, you could take a
look your email client. Does it support strong crypto? Great! Now what
percentage of emails you send *and receive* each day use strong crypto? If
your answer is 95% or higher, you might have a point, if it wasn't for the
fact that the Minister hasn't been shown the video tape just yet].
> They will not. Especially the ministry of economy is well aware that
> the US spies on the german industry, that strong crypto is the only
> protection against it, and that an open-source development model for
> security infrastructure is the only one providing a high enough
> confidence in the security of a product (and providing a
> Wassenaar-loophole though the public domain exemption on it's way,
> which they also are very aware of).
>
> Andreas
>
> --
> "We show that all proposed quantum bit commitment schemes are
> insecure because
> the sender, Alice, can almost always cheat successfully by using an
> Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen type of attack and delaying her
> measurement until she
> opens her commitment." ( http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/quant-ph/9603004 )
>
>
