re text of white house announcement and q as on clipper chip encryption in article qmugcinnpu gap caltech edu hal cco caltech edu hal finney writes the key question is whether non clipper encryption will be made illegal the administration is not saying since encryption threatens the public safety and effective law enforcement we will prohibit it outright as some countries have effectively done nor is the u s saying that every does anyone know what countries are these american as a matter of right is entitled to an unbreakable commercial encryption product there is a false tension created in the assessment that this issue is an either or proposition rather both concerns can be and in fact are harmoniously balanced through a reasoned balanced approach such as is proposed with the clipper chip and similar encryption techniques the clear middle ground implied by these statements is to say that americans have the right to clipper encryption but not to unbreakable encryption this implies that ultimately non clipper strong encryption must become illegal with the following logical consequences a using any code designed to obscure informatio which is not easily breakable will be illegal including i using code words such as project p ii speaking a language other than english iii ever refering implicitly to events not known to everyone eg hi john how was last night for all the listener knows this may be a code for did you pick up the drugs ok last night of be a code for ok we blow up the pentagon at midnight iv mentioning anything that could not be perfectly understood by an average person with no education v words with more than one syllable vi speaking with a heavy accent that could bemisunderstood by people not used to it vii books with an inner meaning such as animal farm as an aside isn t the language here jarring all this talk about harmonious balance when they re talking about taking away people s right to communications privacy yes it looks like the worst nightmares raised by dorothy denning s proposals are coming true if the government continues on this course i imagine that we will see strong cryptography made illegal encryption programs for disk files and email as well as software to allow for encrypted voice communications will be distributed only through the underground people will have to learn how to hide the fact that they are protecting their privacy i have a wonderful encrypter you can borrow that converts a message eg meet me at to bomb the white house bring some dynamite to an apparently relatively innoculous message this message here is an example of the output for the above message it s shocking and frightening to see that this is actually happening here it is shockiong that it could happen anywhere it is shocking that it could happen in a country that has the arrogance to call itself free what you can do write to your congress person in plain text write to your congress person in encrypted text decrypter optional send some random keystroked to your congressperson send some random keystrokes accross the us boundaries and keep the spooks busy trying to decode it write your own encryption algorithms don t buy clipper products p s i can t work out why the us government doesn t want to sell them overseas after all they are rather easy for us interests to decode so make a perfect tool for industrial military espionage lulling anyone stupid enough to buy it into a false sense of security you will notice that there is no mention anywhere about safety for non americans disclaimer my opinions are mine alone and do not represent anyone elses i have nothing that i particularly want to hide at the moment though i consider the right to be able to use whatever method of coding data i like to be high on my list of priorities andrew conway arc leland stanford edu phone usa
