The key-escrow proposal is dreadful … We’re moving our society into a telecommunications environment. I think security mechanisms are fundamental social mechanisms, and what is needed is widespread trust in them – but there’s no trusting secret mechanisms designed by an organization most of whose budget goes to spying.
Predictor: Diffie, Whitfield
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Wired magazine, Steven Levy, an expert technology reporter, interviews Whitfield Diffie, the inventor of public-key cryptography. He responds to the controversy over the U.S. government’s proposed “Clipper” encryption chip, which would allow government agencies to gain access to citizens’ private data. Levy writes: ”‘The key-escrow proposal is dreadful,’ he says, ‘because the big thing we’ve gotten away from in contemporary cryptographic technology is the vulnerability that grows out of having to maintain secret keys for longer than you actually need them. Prior to Aldrich Ames, two of the most damaging spy scandals of the last 20 years in the U.S. – Boyce and Lee at TRW and the Walker ring in the Navy – resulted from the fact that keys existed for longer than they needed to exist, and somebody got a chance to siphon some of them off. If you use public key correctly, particularly in interactive channels like telephones, you can avoid having this hazard. The keys exist only in the equipment, only for the duration of the call, and after that they go away. And so key escrow is just rescuing a dreadful vulnerability.’ The Clipper Chip is even less attractive, says Diffie, when one considers who’s pushing it. ‘We’re moving our society into a telecommunications environment. I think security mechanisms are fundamental social mechanisms, and what is needed is widespread trust in them – but there’s no trusting secret mechanisms designed by an organization most of whose budget goes to spying.'”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Communication
Subtopic: Security/Encryption
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Prophet of Privacy: Whitfield Diffie Took Cryptography Out of the Hands of the Spooks and Made Privacy Possibly in the Digital Age – By Inventing the Most Revolutionary Concept in Encryption Since the Renaissance
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.11/diffie_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney