A few days ago John Gilmore forwarded some comments from Whit. I was curious about one in particular, where Whit said: "Despite all the assurances, there is another trap door in the algorithm that will be used in reading foreign traffic. A publicly [sic] explainable mechanism is needed if the intercepts are to be used in court, but not if they are to be 'Handled Via COMINT Channels Only.'" I don't understand this comment -- at least I don't think I do. Is this a reference to some provision of federal law or a secret directive? I dimly recall from my reading of Bamford, or some other book about the intelligence agencies, that there's a statutory "NSA exception" re electronic interceptions. Is that what's being referred to here? If so, can anyone provide a citation? I'd like to take a look at it. Lee Tien