Re: Encryption

[nospam [at] cliffestones.demon.co.uk]

Owen,

I must confess that I haven't actually read any copy of the RIP bill
but, I thought that Steg was all part of the nightmare. IE if some who
doesn't like you all that much does attempt to fit you up for some
crime and claims there is info hidden in the free space on you drive/
desktop wall paper / MP3 collection etc, I thought imprisonment was
still a possibility for failure to comply etc etc.

	Just out of curiosity has anyone played with StegFS. I thought about
it when I stumbled across it on Kerneli.org but never actually got
around to it. 	

Simon


> 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
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Sheffield Linux User's Group - http://www.sheflug.co.uk
> To unsubscribe from this list send mail to
> - <sheflug-request [at] vuw.ac.nz> - with the word 
>  "unsubscribe" in the body of the message. 
> 
>   GNU the choice of a complete generation.
> 

-- 
Spod-U-Like? http://babel.shef.ac.uk

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Sheffield Linux User's Group - http://www.sheflug.co.uk
To unsubscribe from this list send mail to
- <sheflug-request [at] vuw.ac.nz> - with the word 
 "unsubscribe" in the body of the message. 

  GNU the choice of a complete generation.