Ben Laurie writes:
> Declan McCullagh wrote:
> > Another answer might lie in a
> > little-noticed section of the legislation the
> > White House has sent to Congress. It
> > says that during civil cases or criminal
> > prosecutions, the Feds can use
> > decrypted evidence in court without
> > revealing how they descrambled it.
>
> If you can not reveal how you descramble it, doesn't that mean you can't
> be asked to show that it actually corresponds to the ciphertext?
>
> Scary!
I agree it's scary. What's the difference between that, and being
stopped on a dark road at 2AM by a state trooper? I was, and it was
scary, because he kept asking me if I had any guns, and he wanted to
see what was inside the foil candy wrapper on my dashboard (more
foil), but obviously he expected that it was hash. But what if he
handed back some hash wrapped in foil? What would I have done? At
that point, I've got drugs, and he knows it, and he could arrest me.
What's the difference between that, and someone claiming that a
certain piece of text decrypts to a sinister message?
Seems to me like the best defense against that is mass-market crypto.
Because if the TLA claims that something decrypts to something, and I
can use the mass-market crypto to have it decrypt to something else,
the TLA has a credibility problem.
Or is this not why you're scared?
--
-russ nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://russnelson.com
Crynwr sells support for free software | PGPok | Government schools are so
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | bad that any rank amateur
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX | can outdo them. Homeschool!
