re new encryption psionic wam umd edu whose parenthesized name is either an unfortunate coincidence or casts serious doubt on his bona fides posts a message in which he seems willing to take the word of a private firm about which he knows little that their new encryption algorithm is secure and contains no trapdoors while seemingly distrusting that of the government about clipper i suppose it depends on how paranoid one wishes to be but how does the writer know the firm isn t for example an nsa front for purposes of this message how do we know psionic isn t i don t suggest that but post this to point out that there is a class of speculation that has no more truth value without lots of hard evidence than the contrary one by the way if psionic had said in lower case letters that the firm claims there was no back door i d have no problem with that phrasing david david sternlight great care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of our information errors and omissions excepted
