facinating facts bit serial number possibly fixed s and s hmmm we must assume that generating the unit key u from the serial number n rather than generating it from a randomly selected u and u is an intentional way of assuring a fail safe for the government u is completedly determined given s s and n if s and s do not change they constitute effective master keys along with f the theft of which or the possession of which by various authorities completely obviates the security of the system however more interestingly we know for a fact that if s and s are fixed no matter what the keyspace for u is no more than why not pick u and u at random why this interesting restriction of they key space if it not to provide an additional back door i find it disturbing that at the very best my security is dependant on approximately bytes worth of information that could be written on the back of a napkin even if s and s change periodically the rationale behind this restriction in the size of the keyspace seems strange if one is assuming that the goal is security and makes perfect sense if the goal is an illusion of security if s and s do not change even if they remain secret i wonder if they can somehow be back derived given enough unit key serial number pairs we are assured that this cannot happen but no one understands how skipjack works outside of government officials and soon foreign intelligence services that gain the information via espionage presumably we will eventually have the information as well reverse engineering gets more and more advanced every year but by the time we know it may be too late perhaps the trusted escrow agencies can be the ones who come up with s and s and if these agencies are really trusted aclu nra is an interesting example we can hope that they ll use some physical process to come up with truly random numbers if the nsa comes up with the numbers that s a trap door you could drive a truck through none of this makes me feel the least bit secure me either it seems from the following that the cpsr is atleats starting to question this bogosity april washington dc computer professionals call for public debate on new government encryption initiative computer professionals for social responsibility cpsr today called for the public disclosure of technical data underlying the government s newly announced public encryption management initiative the new cryptography scheme was announced today by the white house and the national institute for standards and technology nist which will implement the technical specifications of the plan a nist spokesman acknowledged that the national security agency nsa the super secret military intelligence agency had actually developed the encryption technology around which the new initiative is built according to nist the technical specifications and the presidential directive establishing the plan are classified to open the initiative to public review and debate cpsr today filed a series of freedom of information act foia requests with key agencies including nsa nist the national security council and the fbi for information relating to the encryption plan the cpsr requests are in keeping with the spirit of the computer security act which congress passed in in order to open the development of non military computer security standards to public scrutiny and to limit nsa s role in the creation of such standards cpsr previously has questioned the role of nsa in developing the so called digital signature standard dss a communications authentication technology that nist proposed for government wide use in after cpsr sued nist in a foia lawsuit last year the civilian agency disclosed for the first time that nsa had in fact developed that security standard nsa is due to file papers in federal court next week justifying the classification of records concerning its creation of the dss david sobel cpsr legal counsel called the administration s apparent commitment to the privacy of electronic communications as reflected in today s official statement a step in the right direction but he questioned the propriety of nsa s role in the process and the apparent secrecy that has thus far shielded the development process from public scrutiny at a time when we are moving towards the development of a new information infrastructure it is vital that standards designed to protect personal privacy be established openly and with full public participation it is not appropriate for nsa an agency with a long tradition of secrecy and opposition to effective civilian cryptography to play a leading role in the development process cpsr is a national public interest alliance of computer industry professionals dedicated to examining the impact of technology on society cpsr has chapters in the u s and maintains offices in palo alto california cambridge massachusetts and washington dc for additional information on cpsr call or e mail cpsr csli stanford edu regards ian ameline
