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From: ed@mtxinu.UUCP (Ed Gould)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Should encrypted radio be legally protected?
Message-ID: <74@mtxinu.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 28-Aug-86 15:01:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: mtxinu.74
Posted: Thu Aug 28 15:01:15 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 29-Aug-86 05:32:03 EDT
References: <1632@well.UUCP> <1013@hoptoad.uucp> <1170@utastro.UUCP> <3230@brl-smoke.ARPA> <1044@hoptoad.uucp>
Reply-To: ed@mtxinu.UUCP (Ed Gould)
Organization: mt Xinu, Berkeley, CA
Lines: 44

William Bogstad:
>> 	In my opinion, a better law would be to protect
>> scrambled/encrypted conversations on the radio waves and leave
>> unprotected messages legally unprotected.  This might encourage the
>> vendors to provide systems with real security and would put the law more
>> in step with the protection you can expect to actually have if someone
>> tries to break the law anyway.

John Gilmore:
>I believe that law should generally follow reality.  Throwing a signal
>into the airwaves is equivalent to painting it on a wall.  Anybody can
>come by and look at it (in reality) and some of them might be able to
>make some sense of it.  If your business requires painting private
>information on public walls, you'd better be *sure* your encryption is
>good.  A law that says "any old encryption will do" does NOT encourage
>vendors to provide systems with real security -- if somebody breaks it,
>and they find out, they can always tie the guy up with lawyers.  On the
>other hand, having no legal protection for any radio signals (e.g. if
>you can decrypt it, it's yours) provides a STRONG incentive for vendors
>to provide real, live, secure, working encryption.  If somebody breaks
>the encryption, their data becomes public and they have to invent a new
>scheme, which costs money.  Better for them to do it right the first time.

John, I'm surprised to see you take this position.  I agree somewhat
that the law should reflect reality, and that it should not discourage
the generation and use of truely secure encryptions.  But suggesting
that the encryption be the *only* protection is equivalent to saying
that one should equip ones house with truely secure locks in order to
keep out burglars.  I would rather see a reasonable lock combined with
a reasonable breaking-and-entering law.  If the sender wants to keep a
transmission private, and takes reasonable steps to do so, *and* makes
it clear to potential {pirates,listeners} that the transmission is
private (this would deal with the rot13 example, since that isn't used
for privacy, but for discretion), then it should be illegal to
decrypt.

I'll have to read through all of the bill to see what it really says,
though.  Thanks to those who keyed it in.

-- 
Ed Gould                    mt Xinu, 2560 Ninth St., Berkeley, CA  94710  USA
{ucbvax,decvax}!mtxinu!ed   +1 415 644 0146

"A man of quality is not threatened by a woman of equality."