Mike Sherwood writes: 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.
I suppose the most serious issue is the internal abuse of power by government employees. We all know that california DMV operators sell drivers records to anybody for small amounts of cash. We all know that social security people sell employment history on any social security number to anybody for small amounts of cash. We've seen political power blocks abuse their authority by investigating opposition groups. We all know the "posse" would have everybody's keys on a brown bag full of DAT tapes within weeks of going live. Look at what bozo 9-X did with everybody's PIN number in their latest phone card mailing!! They printed people's PIN numbers on the *OUTSIDE* of the envelope!!! Why make it easy for them? Moral: Thou shalt not give power unto the gestapo or the bozo - or thou shalt be sorry in the long run. -------- His system was just roadkill along the information superhighway. -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.3a mQCNAiz4FWMAAAEEALBCb7HZS7V4gbsp9yJ7Yty49jQ9wcgRhkLjNNgdyJbrJZCq 5/sv4Ljy/4AhVhjlJyZS8L3owS8l0ClZVzWw4/kO3KN7MPz4YPPR7+qIlPQVM0yv gWpJ43EZZ8b8cvAkE9HATCKWktY2ReRSX5DLnScDH/n5jivw+MD/UO8fURCVAAUR tCBNYXJrIEhpdHRpbmdlciA8YnVnc0BuZXRzeXMuY29tPg== =VbKi -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----