Harry Shapiro Hawk wrote:
The White House Guy wrote: - Clipper-encrypted messages may be further encrypted with another cryptosystem. However, messages may not be encrypted before being encrypted with Clipper. I can understand why they would want to do this as a policy. e.g., they can see who is using other encryption 1) Was he saying they would make this the law? 2) Is there any technical reason it should be this way?
The proposed standards I've seen on the net say you can't encrypt *after* using Clipper, because that makes Clipper key-theft useless. On the other hand, encryption with real systems before encrypting with Clipper is undetectable until after they decrypt the Clipper, so it's hard to enforce except on people who are already suspects, and is unlikely to be convenient to implement (for interoperability) on some of the major Clipper targets, like cellphones and fax machines. ...... Wiretap the usual suspects!