Encryption tears holes in RIP

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 Encryption tears holes in RIP
 http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/15292.html

 By: Lucy Sherriff
 Posted: 07/12/2000 at 11:15 GMT


 A group of cryptographers think they have found a way to defeat the RIP
 Act,
 by making it impossible to hand over the keys to encrypted information.

 The section of the act that has caused so much controversy in the UK
 gives
 the government the right to the plain text of, or key to, enciphered
 information. However, if a person has used an ephemeral key, they never
 know
 what the key is and so cannot pass it on to a third-party, and it is
 this
 vulnerability that the group wishes to exploit.

 They state that their aim is "to defeat RIP Act Part3 and make it look
 silly, and to allow UK citizens to communicate and to store information
 without worrying about it. We are doing this so people can be private
 elsewhere than in our heads. We object to the idea that people should
 not be
 allowed to seek privacy from governments."

 Lead by mathematician Peter Fairbrother, M-o-o-t is an amalgamation of
 encryption specialists and civil liberties campaigners, of whom most
 have
 chosen to remain anonymous. They aim to have software ready to ship by
 June
 2001, in time for the "activation" of the RIP Act.

 The group plans to ship M-o-o-t on CD. It is an alternative operating
 system
 that doesn't use local storage. That way, the group says, if your
 computer
 is seized by police, there will be nothing for them to find.

 Fairbrother, quoted in IT paper Computer Weakly, said: "It is
 technically
 impossible to have an effective law, because of the state of
 cryptography.
 RIP says you have to give a key but you can use an ephemeral key - where
 you
 never knew what the key was."

 He went on: "The thing that amazes me is that the Government is putting
 in
 laws that a simple hobby cryptographer can overcome." ®




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