Encryption Policy Statement

Secure Communications with Manifold:

If you have PGP, use our PGP key to send us unbreakable messages.  When sending a PGP-encrypted message, send it as an attachment to your email.  Do not include it as the "body" of your email, since some mailers will alter the sequence of characters slightly and thus render the encrypted message undecodable.  Although it is illegal for us to provide you with PGP, we have been informed by our international clients that there are many international sites providing free download of PGP.  See the commentary below for examples of international access to PGP.

If you do not have PGP, you may write a message into a plain text file and then encrypt it by using WinZip, or ARJ or similar archiving program with a password.   Attach the archived or zipped text to an email message and send it to us.  You may include the password in the same email, or for maximum security, send the password in a second email.  This method is not as secure as PGP, but it is secure as most bank transactions.

Editorial Commentary on Encryption Regulations

manifold.net supports your right to privacy and to secure financial transactions.  We believe that secure, private communications are a necessary element for business in the modern age.   Secure transactions are made possible through the use of mathematics. When governments speak about "regulating encryption,"  a regrettable consequence is the criminalization of certain areas of mathematics.   Ultimately, encryption can only be "regulated" by suppressing mathematics education and international discussion in those areas.

Regrettably, the United States and many other governments have decided to criminalize the use of mathematics in international settings when math is used to protect privacy and to prevent theft by individuals and businesses other than banks.  We especially regret the US Government's attempts to prevent export of practical, effective means of securing email and other communications.  We sympathize with the government's desire to prevent criminal activities such as terrorism, but feel that criminalizing math will have no effect on criminals except to make it easier for them to steal from law-abiding citizens who are denied secure email.

Not only is this policy imprudent from a mathematics perspective, it is no compliment to the trading partners whom the US wishes to cultivate.  A US policy that criminalizes export of functional cryptography (crypto systems that may be broken cannot be said to be functional) to foreign lands is a very unsubtle way of suggesting that foreigners are somehow not as smart as Americans when it comes to math, so if they are denied access to cryptographic software by American export controls they will therefore be unable to create their own. Nonsense!

Mathematics has always been an international art, and mathematicians practising outside of the US can easily develop mathematics-based security systems.  In fact, hundreds of non-US companies have sprung up as American firms have been denied export business by US policy.  It's not the first time important scientific work has been accomplished overseas, as the image of Einstein to the left should remind us.

A traditional mathematical means of proving a theorem false is to provide a counter-example.  This is exactly the strategy employed by many respected American mathematicians and jurists in their attempts to educate American judges and government personnel as to the counter-productive nature  of current US policy.

For example, Professor Peter Junger's excellent site at http://samsara.law.cwru.edu/links/cryptolinks.html provides a list of "offshore" locations where PGP software may be downloaded by any international user.  Professor Junger is a distinguished professor of Law at Case Western University and has filed suit to overturn the current U.S. policy.   In addition to those sites listed by Professor Junger, a quick Internet search will reveal dozens of international sites where PGP may be obtained.  There are many international programs other than PGP, of course, but these counter-examples show specifically that the US policy has no effect on international access despite its ruinous effect on American security software companies.

Why is a GIS company editorializing on encryption themes?   As an international company, we are primarily concerned that government restrictions on privacy and secure communications make it more difficult for our international clients to place secure orders with our company.  Manifold is also a network aware application and is perfectly capable of mapping computer networks that extend across national borders.  In an Internet-enabled environment, we believe that sophisticated data security measures will necessarily become a part of all applications, such as ours, that are used to create and manage important data sets.

We would urge our colleagues within as well as outside government to educate decision makers on the beneficial effects of mathematics education as well as on the intertwined nature of mathematics and applied cryptography.    We respectfully urge our representatives in Government to work toward solutions to international crime problems that do not needlessly sacrifice the free speech, security and privacy of law abiding citizens. 

By the way, Professor Junger is financing his legal work through private means. This is very difficult and expensive work.  If you wish, send him a few dollars in an envelope to help pay some of his expenses.   His address is:

Peter D. Junger, Professor of Law
Case Western Reserve University
Law School
Cleveland, OH 44106   USA

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