I just posted this reply to comp.risks (answering RISKS DIGEST 14.53).
Summary: Re: [14.53 Mark Seecof] "key escrow"



It is tempting (albeit chauvinistic) to believe that we have a new situation
here, thanks to our pet computers.  This is not true.  David Kahn's "The
Codebreakers", a history of cryptography, makes two things obvious:

1.	Cryptography is a spontaneous invention of private human individuals
	and has been going on for thousands of years.  [Teen-age slang and
	cipher inventions provide a modern example of this spontaneous
	creation.]

2.	The systems people created on their own were roughly as secure as (and
	sometimes more secure than) those used by military and diplomatic
	users *of that time* (although they seem very simple and insecure
	today). [e.g., In places, the Bible used a more complex simple
	substitution than Caesar did for his military dispatches, but before
	Caesar.]

I commend Kahn's book to all who might be interested.
