Re: [TLS] Is there a way forward after today's hum?

[Tom Ritter <[e-mail]>]

On 20 July 2017 at 10:07, Paul Turner <[e-mail]> wrote:
> It seems like that problem exists today with TLS 1.3. If a government is
> powerful enough to mandate key escrow, wouldn’t they also be power enough to
> mandate implementing static DH with TLS 1.3 (so that they key escrow is
> possible). In addition, based on this level of influence, couldn’t they
> alternatively require TLS server owners to provide them unencrypted data.


Anything's possible, but it there's a difference between:

"I demand you implement a new mechanism to securely ship me crypto
keys or plaintext, do something for which there is no standard
mechanism or agreement."

and

"If you flip this existing setting right here in OpenSSL, and stick
this public key right here, it will automatically satisfy our
requirements."

I recall one of the arguments that Apple made against the FBI was that
they were asking them to do something novel that required significant
amounts of work, testing, had never been done before, etc. IANAL but I
think this is standard argument to show the request is unreasonable
and overly burdensome. Removing that argument concerns me.
(US-centric view if that isn't apparent.)

-tom