Re: Encryption

[Dr A V Le Blanc <nospam [at] mcc.ac.uk>]

On Tue, Mar 14, 2000 at 08:39:38PM +0000, Richard wrote:
> I've downloaded the PGP tarfile from....
> 
> http://www.gnupg.org/

One of the best locations in the UK for pgp-related stuff is
ftp.ox.ac.uk, which has (among other things) /pub/crypto/pgp,
including pgpi and gnupg, though the latter is not as up-to-date
as ftp.gnupg.org.

> Anyone had
> anything to do with GPG ?  I understand that there are modules that
> can be downloaded to enable RSA and IDEA.  I'm not up to scratch on
> the legal stuff to do with GPG so don't ask me.

GPG is comparable to pgp, but the user interface is certainly more
awkward.  And documentation needs to be written (or rewritten) for
a lot of packages, I fear.

There are, roughly speaking, three sets of legal issues: what you
use, where and how you get it, and what you do with it.

In some places the use of any encryption program, or even just
possessing an encryption program, can get you into trouble.
The algorithms used by many encryption programs include some which
are problematic; in particular RSA is a problem for US users, who
must use a crippled library even though a faster version is available,
while IDEA has legal issues in most countries.  You have to be
particularly careful if you are using these in commercial activity,
since the stated conditions of use, or the tolerated use of these
programs for private purposes is more or less ignored.  As to
what you do with it, people are distessed at the moment by the
new UK law which more or less presumes that you can and should
decrypt any encrypted messages in your possession on demand by
the police.  Rather dubious, and clearly written by legislators
unaware of the possibility of steganography, which allows you
to encrypt two messages (an important one and a dummy) in the
same encrypted text.

The law is having a hard time keeping up with reality at
the moment; see, for example, the estimate of the number of
schools and universities which are breaking software licensing
laws.

     -- Owen
     LeBlanc [at] mcc.ac.uk
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