To: cypherpunks@toad.com Subject: Re: Black Eye for NSA, NIST, and Denning DEADBEAT sez

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I won't ask why the big deal is being made about all of this -- the agenda surrounding Clipper and friends is clearly a political one, not a technical one, so it is no surprise to hear even the technical voices, i.e., this list, trumpeting Blaze's paper as though it were a dagger in the heart of SKIPJACK. But let's all acknowledge the technical weight and importance of Blaze's result for what it is: minuscule.

The importance is that the current justification for Clipper is 1. The benevolent government wanted us to have very good encryption so they gave us SKIPJACK, but 2. They didn't want to hurt themselves by giving away something that they couldn't crack. The Clipper apologists have retreated from the "we are going to use this to catch criminals" posture to "let's give the citizens good encryption that doesn't hurt us". PGP et al was a devastating answer to the first position, so that is why they abandoned it. Blaze's result destroys the current justification, they are giving us good encryption that they can't break. There is then no reason to push Clipper, unless it is fixed, of course. thad Thad Beier Pacific Data Images 408)745-6755 thad@pdi.com