Black Eye for NSA, NIST, and Denning

[Thaddeus Beier]

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

DEADBEAT sez
>> 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 at pdi.com