re text of white house announcement and q as on clipper chip encryption in article qnpjuinn ci gap caltech edu hal cco caltech edu hal finney writes brad clarinet com brad templeton writes their strategy is a business one rather than legal one they are pushing to get a standard in place a secret standard and if they get it as a standard then they will drive competitors out of the market it will be legal to sell better untapable encryption that doesn t have registered keys but it will be difficult and thus not a plan for most phone companies if brad s analysis is correct it may offer an explanation for why the encryption algorithm is being kept secret this will prevent competitors from coming out with clipper compatible phones which lack the government installed back door the strategy brad describes will only work as long as the only way to get compatible phones is to have ones with the government chips it would be nice from the point of view of personal privacy if brad turns out to be right as long as people still have the power to provide their own encryption in place of or in addition to the clipper privacy is still possible but the wording of several passages in the announcement makes me doubt whether this will turn out to be true even if what brad says turns out to be accurate you can bet that the administration will have made it very clear to the vendors that it would very much be in their best interests to institute a voluntary policy of refusing to sell anything but clinton cripple equipped equipment to anyone other than authorized government agencies and law enforcement or individuals and corporations who have been been determined by the administration to have a valid need on a case by case basis for an effective system note that this is very much like the language used in many gun control bills laws the administration is pushing for or otherwise supporting the logic and actual rationale as opposed to the excuses that get fed to the media is the same in both cases only the items or technology in question are different i think this is no accident it comes from the same philosophy that the government rules controls the people not the people controlling the government that the unconnected citizens are not sophisticated enough to know what is best for them so the government must tell the people what they need or do not need we know best and the idea that that a commoner can defend himself against government eavesdropping or unlawful attack is totally unacceptable to people with this outlook hal finney combine this all with pushing for national identity cards with smart chips to encode anything they please internal passport under the guise of streamlining the state people s health care system and with you can be certain more jewels yet to come and one sees an extremely ominous trend so what if will be ten years late it still is turning out to be an amazingly accurate prophecy unless a lot of people wake up and in a hurry one should always have every red warning light and bell and danger flag come up when the government seeks to set itself apart in regard to rights etc from the unconnected unprivileged citizen or should we now be saying subject instead why shouldn t the average person have a good secure system of data security not dependent on nebulous safeguards for maintaining that security why shouldn t the average person be able to defend himself from an agency gone rogue i am sure the feds could break into any data they really wanted to but it would take some work and using the same logic one should not be allowed to have a good safe unless a duplicate of the key s or combination are submitted for safekeeping by the government i don t really see a difference philosophically encrypted data sure won t evaporate not with such high tech tools as a tape recorder pat rwing uucp without prejudice ucc pat myrto seattle wa if all else fails try uunet pilchuck rwing pat wisdom only two things are infinite the universe and human stupidity and i am not sure about the former albert einstien
