IP: A picture is worth 1K undetectable words

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Date: Sat, 08 Nov 1997 18:19:26 -0500
From: Jock Gill <jgill () penfield-gill com>


Dave,


[for your list]


The PCCIP discussion of encryption is page 2ff of chapter nine, and for
the
present point at issue, the operative paragraph is bullet 2 on page 3.


    "Law enforcement agencies should have lawful access to the
    decrypted information when necessary to prevent or deter serious
    crime.  Procedures for judicial review prior to granting government
    access must be defined in law."


Important 3rd bullet also: it provides for individual rights of redress
when
such access is abused!


The PCCIP, however, fails to admit the obvious:  what's that you are
reading in that picture on your screen?


It appears to be the case that in reviewing 34,000 prosecutions, only 11
depended upon decryption of intercepts and fewer than 700 were based
upon telephone taps.  IE over 33,000 of the cases [97%] required neither
decryption nor interception.


Add to this the simple fact that information can be buried in an
*undetectable* manner in the bit plane of a simple image file, say a
picture of a rose, and it is absolutely clear that the horse is out of
the barn forever.  The government would do well to admit that the
benefits of very hard encryption with respect to the safety of the
infrastrucutre, much less electronic commerce, far outweigh the risks of
its misuse.


The plain fact is that the bad guys are going to send hidden,
undectable, messages in pictures and *not* encrypt their email.   Time
spent on email is time wasted looking in the wrong place.  One can
imagine that encrypted messages might be used as time wasting decoys.


What are we going to do?  Outlaw GIF and JPG files?


Regards,


Jock







--
____________________________________________________________________
Jock Gill
jgill () penfield-gill com
www.penfield-gill.com
____________________________________________________________________














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"Photons have neither morals nor visas"  --  Dave Farber 1994
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