Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com> writes:

Maybe this is just an artifact of Pat's wording, but this sounds like there may be classified court orders other than FISA?

You are reading more into my writing than I intended. I know of no other classified court than FISA. But A. Michael Froomkin noted that my best friend Geoff's slide said "(e.g. FISA)" and asked, since you used "e.g." what are the others? Geoff mumbled and rambled. I took it as a no comment. There were a bunce of lawyers there, including Sobel from EPIC, Danny W from CDT, etc. Perhaps they know of more than I do, I'm just a techie.

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Plus, since you have to be a US citizen to get a clearence, how can there be approved foreign escrow agents? By deals with the foreign governments, presumably reciprocal.

Deals are, of course, possible. But right now, a clearence means US Citizen. AFAIK, the only legal discrimination allowed in employement ads is "US Citizenship required" which is code for "clearence required"

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And the usual, why in hell would a competent spy use crypto escrowed in the US? Competent spies appear to be a surprisingly small fraction of even government-employed espionage personnel

OK, I'll grant you that there arn't many of them. Still, why you don't address my question: why use it if you have an IQ above air temperature? You traffic and low visibility ideas have merit, but why open up to FISA?

And sometimes you're just stuck on the Beltway and have to use your car phone to say you'll be a bit late dropping off the secret plans. You left out the :-) Actually, you'd have appreciated the November DC-cypherpunks meeting, we spent a couple hours driving arround, mapping spook facilities.

Pat Pat Farrell Grad Student http://www.isse.gmu.edu/students/pfarrell Info. Systems & Software Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA PGP key available on homepage #include <standard.disclaimer>