Chaffing and Winnowing - Implications For Law Enforcement

Implications For Law Enforcement

Ron Rivest suggests that laws related to cryptography, including export controls, would not apply to chaffing and winnowing because it does not employ any encryption at all.

The power to authenticate is in many cases the power to control, and handing all authentication power to the government is beyond all reason —Ronald L. Rivest, 1998

The author of the paper proposes that the security implications of handing everyone's authentication keys to the government for law-enforcement purposes would be far too risky, since possession of the key would enable someone to masquerade and communicate as another entity, such as an airline controller. Furthermore, Ron Rivest contemplates the possibility of rogue law enforcement officials framing up innocent parties by introducing the chaff into their communications, concluding that drafting a law restricting chaffing and winnowing would be far too difficult.