Clipper III on the table

[jim bell]

At 06:31 PM 10/1/96 -0700, Lucky Green wrote:
>
>
>
>On Tue, 1 Oct 1996, Robert Hettinga wrote:
>[as to why HP and others support GAK in exchange for DES export]
>
>> I agree with Lucky's earlier hypothesis that HP's doing this to curry 
>favor
>> for government contracts in lieu of an actual marketing strategy, and I
>> leave TIS's motives up to the list as an exercise. ;-).
>
>This not a hypothesis. A policy person from HP told me that
>
>1. HP as well as TIS and other companies sell single DES products that 
>they would like to be able to export.
>2. He was directed by HP's marketing department to find a way to make 
>that happen.
>3. He therefore supports a GAK for export "compromise".


HP, then, might be a good company to approach as a potential donor on a 
DES-cracker.   While they want to be able to portray their products as 
reasonably secure, at the same time they want to be able to de-fuse any 
export limits.  Showing that, say, $25,000 of hardware could crack DES in a 
year (and thus, presumably, $25 million could crack DES in 1/3 of a day, a 
budget available to the NSA et al.) would demonstrate that there's no strong 
reason to keep it restricted in any way.



Jim Bell
jimbell at pacifier.com