Simson Garfinkel wrote: > Sorry, I need to chime in on this one. > > Cryptography is the wrong tool to assure the release > of information at a certain date. The correct tool is > legislation, regulation, and political structures. We > know how those systems work
This is not what I observe, and runs contrary to my experience. In my experience, when a government passes rules or laws relating to the field of activity that a business is in, no one has much idea of what the laws mean, and anything that they think they are sure about is likely to suffer abrupt retroactive change and reinterpretation. Surfmonkey's business model was in large part to cash in on other company's fear of the various acts of congress that were intended to protect the children from the internet. Supposedly, you need to comply with these laws, and since you have no idea how to comply, you should hire Surfmonkey. The dirty secret was that we had no more idea what these meant than anyone else, and in any case, they were not enforced. The present economic chaos is in part a result of Sarbanes-Oxley, which made it legal, and indeed arguably mandatory, for various financial firms to misrepresent the value of their mortgages in a fashion very similar to the way that Enron misrepresented the value of their gas contracts. To make accounts correctly represent reality is a hard problem, a problem in which legislators lack background and skills. When legislators proceeded to tell businessmen how to do their accounts, the result was complete disaster. _______________________________________________ FDE mailing list [email protected] http://www.xml-dev.com/mailman/listinfo/fde
