From: caronni@nessie.cs.id.ethz.ch (Germano Caronni)
Subject: Re: PGP technical question (Not a flame)
Followup-To: alt.test
Summary: Reply to Sternlight and a FLAME
Keywords: IDEA,Swiss,ETH,politics
Organization: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, CH
Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1992 22:40:24 GMT

In article <1992Dec22.220242.3624@netcom.com> strnlght@netcom.com (David Sternlight) writes:
>Wasn't it a Swiss firm, Hagelin AG, that (according to Bamford) sold
>cryptographic devices for years while both cooperating with governmental
>code breakers, and perhaps even knowing their system was broken?

I do see no direct connection between 'a swiss firm' and IDEA.
Beside this I actually do not know what Haegelin did.

>I'm asking, not accusing, but it would be an amusing historical
>footnote to IDEA being the product of a Swiss firm.

Wrong. PES, and later IPES (which is IDEA) are products of Mr. Lai, and
part of his doctorate thesis. (Mr. Massey did participate in it too). 
So IDEA is a product of ETH. Correct is that Ascom and the ETH together
hold a swiss patent on it, which requires licensing usage of IDEA for
commercial purposes.
I am sure there exist lots of footnotes on all major inventions such as
Nylon, the Manhatten Project, Peniciline, the great invention of Mr.
Nobel, Sauerbruchs Work and Gun-Powder.
But I am not able to understand what is 'amusing' that a firm holds part 
of a patent on an algorithm, which is part of a doctorate thesis.

>No reading between the lines, please. :-)

You force me to. I personally find it *VERY* interesting that you inter-
connect the IDEA algorithm, whose security is admittably not as well 
proven as that of DES :-))), and the usances of a firm which eventually
did some ethically and perhaps even legally wrongs with their crypto-
systems and I will keep to my imagination whatever your purpose might have
been.

If someone is ready to discuss the security of IDEA, I will be very
interested to see a new thread start. I will try to obtain part of
Mr. Lai's thesis which describes IDEA in detail in /TeX-Format, 
in the middle of January, but can NOT guarante success.

>>>START OF FLAME-LIKE PART<<<
Followups to this thread are directed to alt.test, as it could easily 
glide into political discussion, which I do NOT like on sci.crypt. 

I would really like it, if all these discussions, which are easily
recognized by containing some of the strings like 'PKP comments' or 
'PKP vs. PGP' or 'legality' etc. in the subject line, and have mostly
turned into polemics and flames by now, would be moved to /dev/null too!
It's sci.crypt, not soc.crypt!! I agree on the necessity of ethical rules
even for scientists :-)) but those discussions seem more and more like 
wasted bandwith to me!

Mr. Sternlight or whoever, if you want to discuss with me about politics,
ethics, moral, usance of firms, legality etc. interconnected with sci.crypt
and already discussed in the beginnings of above mentioned threads,
please mail me directly :-)

All facts, opinions and beliefs expressed here are mine, and may change
without notice :-)) I can not give any gurantee for correctness!

Friendly greetings and a happy new year

		Germano Caronni

-- 
Instruments register only through things they're designed to register.
Space still contains infinite unknowns.

Germano Caronni    caronni@nessie.cs.id.ethz.ch
Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: whitaker@eternity.demon.co.uk (Russell Earl Whitaker)