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Cyphernomicon 11.17

Surveillance, Privacy, And Intelligence Agencies:
Loose Ends


  11.17.1. USPS involvement in electronic mail, signatures,
            authentication (proposed in July-August, 1994)
           + Advantages:
             - many locations
             - a mission already oriented toward delivery
           + Disadvantages:
             - has performed terribly, compared to allowed compettion
                (Federal Express, UPS, Airborne, etc.)
             - it's linked to the goverment (now quasi-independent, but
                not really)
             - could become mandatory, or competition restricted to
                certain niches (as with the package services, which
                cannot have "routes" and are not allowed to compete in
                the cheap letter regime)
             - a large and stultified bureaucracy, with union labor
           - Links to other programs (software key escrow, Digital
              Telephony) not clear, but it seems likely that a quasi-
              governemt agency like the USPS would be cooperative with
              government, and would place limits on the crypto systems
              allowed.
  11.17.2. the death threats
           + An NSA official threatened to have Jim Bidzos killed if he
              did not change his position on some negotiation underway.
              This was reported in the newspaper and I sought
              confirmation:
             - "Everything reported in the Merc News is true. I am
                certain that he wasnot speaking for the agency, but when
                it happened he was quite serious, at least appeared to
                be.  There was a long silence after he made the threat,
                with a staring contest.  He was quite intense.
                
                "I respect and trust the other two who were in the room
                (they were shocked and literally speechless, staring into
                their laps) and plan to ask NSA for a written apology and
                confirmation that he was not speaking for the agency.
                We'll see if I get it.  If the incident made it into
                their trip reports, I have a chance of getting a letter."
                [jim@RSA.COM (Jim Bidzos), personal communication, posted
                with permission to talk.politics.crypto, 1994-06-28]
  11.17.3. False identities...cannot just be "erased" from the computer
            memory banks. The web of associations, implications, rule
            firings...all mean that simple removal (or insertion of a
            false identity) produces discontinuities, illogical
            developments, holes...history is not easily changed.


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