> 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?
There are two problems with the ability to produce evidence without
specifying how you got it. If the Feds have a large amount of
encrypted data. Maybe months of information and they were unable
to decrypt it they could just make something and submit it to the
court.
If I decide that I want to challenge the evidence I am going to
have to decrypt the message as provided by the court and document
how I did it. Now I may have successfully challenged the submitted
evidence but I have now been compelled to hand over my key which
the government can now use to read the rest of the encrypted
data.
The government might have a short term credibility problem in the
case depending upon the strength of the additional evidence they
are now able to produce. But it seems to me that this is really
a technique to use against small time players in the hopes of being
able to collect evidence against larger fish.
Jeffrey Altman * Sr.Software Designer * Kermit-95 for Win32 and OS/2
The Kermit Project * Columbia University
612 West 115th St #716 * New York, NY * 10025
http://www.kermit-project.org/k95.html * [EMAIL PROTECTED]
