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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!eagle!mhuxl!houxm!hogpc!pegasus!avi
From: avi@pegasus.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.crypt
Subject: Re: Davida patent
Message-ID: <942@pegasus.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 15-Feb-84 10:49:49 EST
Article-I.D.: pegasus.942
Posted: Wed Feb 15 10:49:49 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 17-Feb-84 02:36:35 EST
References: <2284@allegra.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Information Systems, Lincroft NJ
Lines: 24

allegra!don asked:
  D	I have also head that Davida's cryptography system was temporarily
  O	blocked.  It was based on some sort of random number generator which
  N	fed out very small projections of its state.  Does anyone know more
	about it?

Which cryptography system are you talking about? When I was at the
University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, I heard part of the story from George
Davida and from one of his graduate students -- if we are talking about
something that goes back a few years. The way I remember it, he was stopped
from publishing his stuff or setting up a commercial venture that used it.
Some branch of the government decided that it would violate national
security. I remember that there were some court appeals. I never found out
what the result was. The story even made some of the local papers.

I don't remember any details about the system that was suppressed. I do
remember that George wanted some of us to write an arithmetic package that
would handle integers containing an arbitrary number of digits. The amusing
part was that he wanted this done in Pascal. I remember the problems I had
writing the DES algorithm without useful bit-manipulation primitives. Using
sets to simulate bits does not always generate a rapidly-running program.
-- 
-=> Avi E. Gross @ AT&T Information Systems Laboratories (201) 576-6241
 suggested paths: [ihnp4, allegra, cbosg, hogpc, ...]!pegasus!avi