I was thinking about the problems that people have with escrowed keys and was wondering a few things. For one, things like the clipper chip would not give law enforcement agencies any new abilities or powers - they are currently allowed to tap a phone conversation iff they have a court order to do so. escrowed clipper keys would only be revealed if a court had decided that there was enough evidence against someone to justify a wiretap (and the accompanying keys). so these could only be revealed in the case of criminal activity (or reasonable suspicion thereof), which means that most people wouldn't have anything to worry about. now, is the real problem that the key escrow agency is the weakest link in the chain of security? that people don't trust the government having these things since they could quietly copy the database to the nsa? what about the possibility of having some organization like, but not necessarily the eff hold onto keys so that they would reveal them, or better, decrypt only in the case of a court order, but they would also make it publicly known if the nsa tried to claim they had an inherent right to all of the info. I haven't really thought too much about this one way or the other, but I thought it would be worthwhile to get some others' opinions. -Mike -- Mike Sherwood internet: mike@EGFABT.ORG uucp: ...!sgiblab!egfabt!mike