how does it really work was re text of white house announcement and q as on clipper chip encryption this announcement is somewhat disconcerting it doesn t do anything evil in and of itself but bodes badly for the future of open algorithms and standards in information security i won t start panicking until unless des or rsa or stuff like that is prohibited but i m a little anxious no doubt it won t be long before someone posts explaining how this just a small part of some far ranging and long lived nsa pkp irs fbi cia handguncontrolinc clinton conspiracy to subvert freedom democracy and mathematics my feeling is that the administration probably isn t that worried about things like des and rsa and pgp and ripem since they ll never be used by a group much wider than us computer geeks the fact that this just came out now suggests one of two things the nsa has been working on this for a long time and it only just now happened to be ready to release to the world at this time the nsa has been working on this for a long time but wasn t able to get the bush administration to go along with this plan i find it unlikely that this would have been because of a sympathy for the unescrowed use of cryptography more likely the administration felt that even escrowed secret algorithm and for all we know trivially breakable cryptography should not be made widely available thus said clipper csrc ncsl nist gov clipper chip announcement this new technology will help companies protect proprietary information protect the privacy of personal phone conversations and prevent unauthorized release of data transmitted electronically at the same time this technology preserves the ability of federal state and local law enforcement agencies to intercept lawfully the phone conversations of criminals the majority of the discussion involving this clipper chip seems to pertain to the encryption of telephone conversations does anyone know if that means this chip is designed to work primarily with analog signals the language sort of suggests this but it s hard to say the main thing i just don t get is whether this chip implements symmetric or asymmetric cryptographic techniques anybody know i m guessing symmetric but they don t get very clear about it if it is symmetric how is it useful for anything other than link level encryption with an identical chip at each end how can you negotiate a per session key using symmetric cryptography without using a trusted third party who knows your key or does it even use a per session key if it s asymmetric what about pkp s patents which they claim cover all methods of doing asymmetric cryptography are they getting royalties or is hiding infringement the real reason for keeping the algorithm secret marc vanheyningen mvanheyn cs indiana edu mime ripem accepted kirk i won t hurt you alien you hit me kirk well i won t hit you again
