I had the dubious pleasure of meeting Baker in person a year ago during a CPSR-sponsored conference in DC. I had argued vigorously with him during a break before I realized that he was NSA's general counsel; afterwards, I realized that if I didn't have a file with them before, I certainly would later. :-)

I argued that the bad guys would have strong cryptography no matter what laws were passed, so we might as well make sure the good guys could have it too. His retort, repeated quite a few times, was, "So, your attitude toward the government is "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke?" It wasn't exactly a reasoned, logical debate.

maybe he's a subgenius. [note to whichever nsa employee is reading this: check out the book of the subgenius for more info on this. it's really good reading, anyway.] about the bad guys getting strong crypto: let's review the des story for a moment, keeping in mind that clipper in the 90s may be a repeat of des in the 70s: des came out of the lucifer project at ibm in the early 70s and was adopted as a standard in 1976. at the time it was published, the design criteria of the s-boxes were classified, and this worried many people. everyone suspected that the nsa had hidden a backdoor of some kind in the s-boxes. the truth behind the s-boxes finally came out in 1990 when biham and shamir published the idea of differential cryptanalysis. it turns out that the design of the s-boxes is optimized against differential cryptanalysis and also that the 16 rounds were chosen specifically to defeat differential cryptanalysis. ibm researchers and the nsa knew about that in the early 70s. so the nsa did two things: they made sure that des was safe against differential cryptanalysis, in case some other entity had also discovered it, and also they classified the criteria of the design, to make sure that the public wouldn't find out about differential cryptanalysis. the nsa came out looking bad, but in retrospect, both of these actions really were for the benefit cryptography users. of course the 56 bit key size is more suspicious now than ever, and i would be very surprised if a des breaking machine didn't exist somewhere in the world. could clipper be the repeat of this story? on the surface, it all looks pretty suspicious, and maybe the character of the nsa has changed since the 70s, but we can't dismiss the possibility that it really is somehow in our own best interests. remember, they know more about cryptography than any other group anywhere in the world. e

<In mail Julietta said:>

Stevens Miller wrote:

[ Stuart Baker's (of the NSA) comments deleted ]

We obviously need to respond to this sort of tactic with some P.R. work of our own.

I am sure that plenty of you all can write- we should make sure the word gets out to the masses reagrding the true nature of the Net and regarding the Clipper isssue in particular, now that we know what tactic the NSA is going to take.

I agree with Julie that we need some P.R. for this. I also think we should do it by writing and getting the word out. However, I think we should form a small informal group of people seriously interested in putting together a well thought out document that is factual and without emotional flair that a member of the press would respect, could understand, and might pass on to the public. I want to propose that this small group develop a document to the best of their abilities, refine it, and when they think it is ready post it to the list for a "final lookover". I am willing to organize the initial document work if there is interest. If you think you'd like to help with the first stages of this "PR Kit" please contact me via email. If there is sufficient interest I will let the rest of the list know and we can communicate via email to keep the list traffic down at first. When we have it's first form then everyone on the list will have a chance to comment before it is mailed out. If you think this is a good idea and want to help then let me know. ALSO, if you just think this is a good idea but would rather not help build the initial document, let me know anyway so I can gauge interest in it. While I applaud the efforts of Jeff Davis with his mass mailings I feel a newsperson might be tempted to dismiss him offhand since he is one person. If this is put together by the group and we let the press know we are programmers, lawyers, physicists, real estate salespeople, etc. etc. etc. and include the name (email address/pseudonym/etc) of anyone on the list who wishes to be named then we will have a better chance of being taken seriously. Let me know what you think, Jim -- Tantalus Inc. Jim Sewell Amateur Radio: KD4CKQ P.O. Box 2310 Programmer Internet: jims@mpgn.com Key West, FL 33045 C-Unix-PC Compu$erve: 71061,1027 (305)293-8100 PGP via email on request. 1K-bit Fingerprint: 8E 14 68 90 37 87 EF B3 C4 CF CD 9A 3E F9 4A 73