IP: Re: "A picture is worth 1K undetectable words..."

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

To: farber () cis upenn edu

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Folder: YES

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Dave:


It's a rainy overcast Monday morning in Santa Monica and Los Angeles -- the
first real rain of the season.  Perhaps El Nino is weeping?  I guess the
day prompts me to be introspective.


re your forwarded Sunday message ("...criminals will use [steganography] to
hide their traffic in [JPG and GIF] pictures...") and the implied criticism
that General Marsh's PCCIP ignored the obvious.  The technical feasibility
of the observation about that form of crytography is of course valid.


But I'd like to repeat the point that I made in my prior msg to you:


    The Commission properly spoke to cryptography in the context of its
    assigned task; namely, protecting the critical infrastructure.  Equally
    properly, it did not -- and should not -- address cryptography as a
    national policy issue.  The latter debate belongs elsewhere and it is
    elsewhere.


Technologists tend to be an impatient lot and once the solution seems
obvious to them, then there's often a critical reaction if the politicos
and related folks don't rush to their solution.  But the political world
doesn't work that way.


Political progress in policy dialogue is slow, tedious, time consuming, and
sometimes frustrating but it seemingly cannot be hurried except in very
unusual circumstances.  Appropriate things have to get said; all parties
have to be heard from.  BUT, of equal import, is that inappropriate things
not be said.


In my view, it is a positive step that the Presidential Commission kept
cryptography in proper perspective, given the terms of its charter.  It is
to be congratulated for not having spooked and waded into a highly charged
debate going on elsewhere.  Whatever pressures were on the Commission to
take a position on the key recovery/key escrow issue, it wisely resisted.
We should all be grateful that it did so; we should all be pleased that the
Commission kept its cool on an issue that is not central to its charter and
that it did not have time to investigate and accumulate a database of facts.


Thoughtful constructive inputs are the way to progress.  Scolding won't
help; it puts people off and is often ignored.  Criticizing won't help
either unless it's accompanied by positive ideas.  And in the cryptography
debate, we could use some innovative ideas about now.


                                        whw










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