re clipper considered harmful brad optilink com brad yearwood writes if clipper comes to cellular phones along with legal proscriptions against using other cipher systems on these phones a new and potentially dangerous class of crime is created criminals who very badly want inscrutable tactical communications specifically the terrorists and drug dealers who proponents of key escrow cite as threats will be highly motivated to steal the cipher phone of a legitimate user and to kill this person or hold them hostage so discovery of compromise of the device will be delayed yow get some sleep brad you mean that people i e life is cheap terrorists drug dealing warlords who want to communicate in privacy will prefer to break into my house kill or kidnap me and steal my telephone rather than spending at k mart to buy a new phone purchasing a load of phones from the black market flea market super market talking gasp face to face walking down to any one of millions of pay phones using messengers going to excruciating effort to think of code phrases like i had a blowout on the freeway today look this system does nothing to threaten folks who know they re being wiretapped since it s trivial to find other avenues of communication they d have no reason to resort to extreme measures since a plethora of simple alternatives are easily available to them among all the legitimate reasons to damn the proposed system i don t think we need to worry about terrorist commie drug warlord assasin thugs murdering our families kicking the dog and leaving the toilet seat up just to steal a telephone the system is more like urine testing it catches some small number of very stupid people has no effect on the bad guys with at least three neurons working in unison who wish to subvert it and penalizes most heavily those who have no cause to be subject to it steve hollasch kubota pacific computer inc hollasch kpc com santa clara california
