re clipper chip in article almaden ibm com jbs watson ibm com writes is it realistic for the government to try to keep the details of the encrytion algorithm secret if it intends to use evidence from james b shearer i do not think they can use the eavesdropping as evidence at all however using the info they gather while listening they can go searching the right place and find good strong evidence which they can use in court question currently it is easy to wire tap from the technical point of view at least anybody using the appropriate radio receiver can listen to communications between a car telephone and the ground station the police also obviously the clipper chip will make it much more difficult for the non authorized person to eavesdrop note that i do not write impossible the privacy will thus improve from the current situation poeple who really have something to hide already do not use the phone to speak of these things if an illegal operation is really worth one can afford having critical data carried by a person rather than sending it electronically the clipper chip will not change this the problem is more politic foreign countries will never accept the clipper chip is the access to the escrow cannot be directly granted to their own police following their own law not the us law i e each country will have its own escrow how then will it be possible to monitor the international traffic or will encrypted international traffic be possible or will there be an international escrow some kind of u n thing forbidding crypted communication is impractical how is it possible to spot a crypted communication in the thousands of megabytes of data which circulate on the various existing networks what about private networks and this will be more and more impossible as the volume of electronic traffic will increrase in the next years i think that the clipper chip can only be an interesting device to limit the risk of for instance one s girlfriend s husband listening to his wife s communications it will bring no more as regards to security is it worth i think so if its cost is limited i think that many privacy invasions are done not only by official services but also by private entities the clipper can help reducing these provided we do not hope too much of it it is not a real danger and it can be helpful ph hoogvorst
