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Crypto Archives: Re: Electronic envelopes

Re: Electronic envelopes

Mok-Kong Shen (mok-kong.shent-online.de)
Tue, 28 Sep 1999 09:06:23 +0200

jeromepsti.com wrote:
>

> 1. i pay a notary R, who lives for example in the US, to keep the
> encrypted document until 1 jan 2020
> 2. i tell him to read all the newpapers published in the US at this date
> and to read the announces to spot a message with a predefined pattern
> like 'the key is ....'
> 3. i pay another notary S, who lives in italy lets say, to keep my key
> and to publish it in several US newpapers (without specifiing which
> ones) on 1 jan 2020.
> 4. notary R read all papers and find the key and can decrypt the message.
>
> if you want to allow fault tolerance, you can split your key and/or R and S
> can be a set of distinct notaries instead of a single one.
> (i have skiped all details explained several times in my previous posts)

Whether you split the key information or not, there is the question
of whether there is possibility of sabotaging the key recovery
(delaying its being obtained, etc.) and other technical issues.
But the biggest problem I see up till now is how the public (not the
depositor of the document) can be convinced that there is no
manipulation in any solutions proposed so far (in particular in the
above of how honest are the persons holding the key informations
believed to be). In fact, if there is a single person or an agency
in the world that all people trust, then there is no need of the
scheme being discussed at all.

M. K. Shen

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Tue Sep 28 1999 - 06:45:34 CDT