Comment by seanhunter

I remember seeing a TV program[1] where the UK govt had proposed some hare-brained key escrow thing (this is circa 2000 ish) and they had an expert on to discuss it. Well they didn’t mess around. The expert they had on to explain the drawbacks of the scheme was Whitfield Diffie[2] and he was up against some government contractor slug in a suit. Anyhow Diffie explained that there is essentially no security measure that is effective if you create a prize of infinite value. If the prize for circumventing security is great enough, it will be possible to use money to get around whatever security.

[1] “Newsnight” on BBC

[2] As in Diffie-Hellman etc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitfield_Diffie