re clipper considered harmful shirriff sprite berkeley edu ken shirriff writes it seems likely to me that that a large subset of encrypted communications would be archived to tape so they could be read if sometime in the future probable cause arises and a warrant is obtained i can even imagine this being found legal and constitutional since nothing is actually listened to until a valid warrant is issued and the keys are obtained imagine archiving all pay phone conversations so if someone turns out to be a drug dealer you can listen to all their past drug deals and archive calls to from suspected mafia members potential terrorists radicals etc imagine the convenience for the police of being able to get a warrant now and listening to all the calls the world trade center bombers made in the past year imagine if this were available during the elections instead of clumsily searching through the clinton passport file they could have just done a voice grep as someone stated earlier on his telephone conversations for the last years i m not a lawyer and i don t even play one on tv but intuitively there s something wrong with having one s words archived for possible future use against you this possibility frightens me more than any of the talk about the clipper chip right to cryptography etc since archiving would be such a powerful tool and so easy to do why wouldn t it happen i m afraid it just might nhy nina h yuan it s a miracle that curiosity harvard college survives formal education yuan husc harvard edu albert einstein
