From: "Pat Farrell" <pfarrell@cs.gmu.edu> [...]
The "government" as a whole is not against crypto. The NSA is _very strongly_ against it. There are 60,000 or more bureaucrats in NSA that would be effectively put out of work by widespread strong crypto.
Hmmm..... actually I must disagree with this. The NSA may oppose strong crypto, but a few facts should be brought up: 1) The NSA is not chartered for domestic surveillance work. If you discover the NSA watching you within the US you can have them arrested. They are probably more interested in the systems being put in use around the world and less about systems internal to the U.S. 2) The NSA has been dealing with strong cryptography for a long time. These are the people who have been playing crypto games with "the Ruskies" since before I was born. I sincerely doubt they are losing a great deal of sleep over the fate of Clipper. They may have an interest in promoting relatively weak cryptography that will be exported and may actually favor weak crypto at home (hoping for the Beta v. VHS effect to spread this weak crypto from the U.S. to the rest of the world) but no one at Fort Meade is going to be getting a pink slip if Clipper goes down in flames. The FBI, and other domestic law enforcement agencies are probably very gung ho for weak crypto, but I just don't think that No Such Agency is going to be greatly effected by it. Thier fingerprints are all over the Clpper stuff, but seeing as how thier other mission is to develop ciphers this is only natural. Just a little thought late at night... jim
I believe that the FBI and other more public agencies are simply shills for NSA. The many posting about real wiretap usage and costs simply can't support taking all the heat last year of Digital Telophony and this year over Clipper, esp. when they admit that smart crooks wouldn't bother to use Clipper.
BTW, I talked to Dorothy Denning at the conference. She says that it is now called the "Key escrow chip" because of Intergraph's trademark on Clipper. I'll post more on my conversations with DE Denning later.
Pat
Pat Farrell Grad Student pfarrell@cs.gmu.edu Department of Computer Science George Mason University, Fairfax, VA Public key availble via finger #include <standard.disclaimer>