From: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com (bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com +1-510-484-6204)
<<CLIPPER COMPROMISED? "Security Insider Report," a monthly newsletter published in Seminole, Fla., has reported that government officials are seeking to determine whether former CIA employee and alleged traitor Aldrich Ames may have sold information to the Russians about the government's secret key-escrow technology used in Clipper Chip chipsets and Capstone Tessera cards. The secret key-escrow technology, dubbed Skipjack, can be used to encrypt network voice and data.
which must *obviously* be true because it came off the *wire services*... Probably Aldrich Ames didn't have any contact with the people in the NSA doing Clipper or the FBI people doing Digital Telephony Prevention.
Ames may have had access to the rationale Dot and an un-named white house source were quoted to effect ' ..if you knew what I know, you would understand the need' (in effect tying Clipper to national security). Were he to compromise how good the interception is IN THIS COUNTRY to a foreign powers intelligence service, for instance, it might severly change their way of doing communications in the U.S. (the target country). Thus, nullifying some of the effect of say, a hypothetical successor to SHAMROCK, (Allen Steeles Big Ear).