re text of white house announcement and q as on clipper chip encryption in article apr clarinet com sci crypt alt security comp org eff talk comp security misc comp org acm comp org ieee brad clarinet com brad templeton writes let s assume for the moment that the system really is secure unless you get both halves of the encryption key from the two independent escrow houses let s say you even trust the escrow houses one is the aclu and the other is the eff and i m not entirely joking about those two names the problem with let s assume reasoning is that taken to the extreme and you re close you arrive at let s assume this is perfectly ok the assumptions you make are big ones if the system is really secure then why does the government have to keep the algorithm secret there are plenty of encryption algorithms that don t depend upon nondisclosure to be secure so why in the world use one that does there are reasons of course but i certainly can t think of any honest ones next you assume we can trust the escrow houses but the last time i checked every single branch of government has experienced unauthorized disclosure corruption and even fabrication of supposedly secure data the govt is saying yeah but now we re serious so you can trust us bullcrypt and finally although you didn t state it explicitly you implicitly assume that the warrant mechanism in this country is safe and reasonable the case in ventura county of a man shot and killed by officers serving a deliberately fraudulant warrant tells me that the govt has a long ways to go on this score remember that all this is to catch the drug dealers right as others have pointed out the current proposal will if deployed render truly secure encryption much more expensive and inconvenient than uncle sam s brand who will be able to afford and be sufficiently motivated to purchase this expensive inconvenient higher protection somebody with lots of extra cash the following is more true than ever when strong encryption is outlawed only outlaws will have strong encryption mel beckman internet mbeckman mbeckman com beckman software engineering compuserve ventura ca voice fax you can observe a lot just by watching yogi bera
