re once tapped your code is no good any more al escom com al donaldson writes amolitor nmsu edu andrew molitor writes yes those evil guys in the fbi can probably with some effort abuse the system i got news for you if the evil guys in the fbi decide they want to persecute you they re gonna and if richard nixon had had this kind of toy he wouldn t have had to send people into the watergate this appears to be generic calling upon the name of the anti christ just for the hell of it let s destroy this remark let us imagine that the executive branch actually could extract keys from the escrow houses without anyone knowing or telling now what dick has bits of data what the hell s he gonna do with it trot around to the telco and say we d like an unauthorised decrypting tap uh huh break in to watergate and install his own tap so his people still do have to break in neat huh record some noise then get the executive branch phone decryption box huh they ve got one goodness wait til the washington post gets hold of this and decrypt the noise more likely stare at the key and say oh hell it s not worth all this bloody hassle truth is even granted lots of covert power on the part of the executive branch this system is more difficult to tap with than pots gear the fact that it is easier to tap than some hypothetical system neither you nor i am going to place on our phones is neither here nor there the only rational concerns i am seeing raised are a is the key really just chopped in half and not some xor arrangement that is has some egregious technical error been built in to the plan b is this is the first step toward strict regulation of strong encryption but that s not really the issue the real issue is whether this will be used to justify a ban against individuals use of private i e anything else encryption methods this is b of course i suspect not if the government actually wanted to make such regs they d just do it a few hundred people on usenet yelling about it wouldn t even slow the machine down besides who is this mysterious they who s going to take away all our rights the instant we let our guard down congress that gang of buffoons can t even balance their checkbooks the fbi but they don t make the laws the nsa ditto the white house bill clinton is probably still looking for the bathroom it s a big place after all andrew al
