re dorothy denning opposes clipper capstone wiretap chips in article c bj bk agora rain com jhart agora rain com jim hart writes the security of the system should depend only on the secrecy of the keys and not on the secrecy of the algorithms dorothy denning jhart agora rain com you re reading far too much into this aside from the obvious fact that you shouldn t hold anybody to what they wrote in a year old book in a rapidly changing field like this quite simply she says that the security should not depend on the secrecy of the algorithm a secret algorithm can still be secure after all we just don t know it only our level of trust is affected not the security of the system the algorithm could be rsa for all we know which we believe to be secure they have a much better reason to classify the algorithm than to protect its security they want to protect its market share if they publish the algorithm then shortly manufacturers would make chips that implement the algorithm and standard but do not use a key stored in escrow and of course everybody would buy them the whole push of this chip is that by establishing a standard that you can only use if you follow their rules they get us to follow their rules without enacting new laws that we would fight tooth and nail quite simply with clipper established it would be much harder for another encryption maker to define a new standard to make phones that can t talk to the leading phone companies the result is tappable cryptography without laws forbidding other kinds for of the populace to get untappable crypto you would have to build a special phone that runs on top of this system and everybody you talk to would have to have an indentical one that s the chicken and egg of crypto the government is using its very special ability to solve chicken and egg problems of new technologies to control this one in a way they like it s almost admirably clever when the eff started i posed the question here what are the police going to do when they wake up and discover they can t wiretap and nobody here had an answer or even thought it was much of a question then came the backdoor and digital telephony bills which we fought now we have their real answer the cleverest of all brad templeton clarinet communications corp sunnyvale ca
