On Wed, 26 Jun 2002, Donald Eastlake 3rd wrote: > "Privacy", according to the usual definitions, involve controlling the > spread of information by persons autorized to have it. Contrast with > secrecy which primarily has to do with stopping the spread of > information through the actions of those not authorized to have it. > > > We have thousands of years of experience with military crypto, where > > the parties at both ends of the conversation are highly motivated to > > restrict the flow of private information. The current state of this > > technology is very robust. > > That's secrecy technology, not privacy technology.
I have seen "private" and "secret" defined in exactly the opposite fashion as regards keys: a "private" key is private because you never ever share it with anyone, whereas a "secret" (symmetric) key is a secret because you've told someone else and you expect them to not share it (in the sense of "can you keep a secret?"). Clearly there's not a common understanding of these simple words. Seems to me that Dan's mini-rant was referring to "privacy" in the sense you define it above (controlling spread of info already held by others). - RL "Bob"