Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Fall Semester, 2002
MIT 6.805/6.806/STS085: Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier
Week of class on Sept. 12
The room for class meetings has changed. Starting today we
will meet in room 34-304.
Odd and ends
- Take a look at this September 7 Reuter's News article
Microsoft, Allies Gear to Reshape Copyright Debate. We'll be
discussing Palladium and Trusted Computing in October.
- On September 9, several ISPs and computer industry orgnizations
filed an
amicus brief in support of Verizon's refusal to honor the
RIAA subpoena. You should skim the brief and compare it with your own
arguments in responding to last week's rotisserie question.
In class this week
We'll start with an overview of basic ideas in cryptography and
public-key infrastructures (PKI), and then move to a recap of US
policy efforts throughout the 90s to control the spread of
cryptographic software. Then we'll look at some of the issues and
experiences that arise in deploying public-key infrastructures in
real environments, and we'll see how there's much more to consider than
just a technology view.
This basic lesson -- that there is much more involved in the
feasibility of a technology than technological issues alone -- will be
a recurring theme throughout the semester as we look at Digital Rights
architectures.
Readings to do before class:
- Skim the class archive on The
Encryption Controversy, 1994-1997. You need not read any of the
included papers and articles, except for the Risks paper, as
indicated below.
- The Risks of Key
Recovery, Key Escrow, and Trusted Third-Party Encryption, by (Hal
Abelson, Ross Anderson, Steven Bellovin, Josh Benaloh, Matt Blaze,
Whitfield Diffie, John Gilmore, Peter Neumann, Ronald Rivest, Jeffrey
Schiller, and Bruce Schneier. This paper cautions that key recovery
for government access (where keys must be made accessible to
law-enforcement on short notice without the knowledge of the
user) has inherent risks and expenses that are not well
understood, and advises against rapid, wide-scale deployment of such
systems. Read just the preface and skim the rest. The preface is a
1998 update to the bulk of the paper (written in 1997).
- Ten Risks of
PKI: What You're Not Being Told About Public Key Infrastructure,
by Carl Ellison and Bruce Schneier, Computer Security
Journal, v 16, n 1, 2000, pp. 1-7.
To do after class
Don't forget that there will be a new rotisserie writing assignment
issued Friday morning.