re how to detect use of an illegal cipher how can the government tell which encryption method one is using without being able to decode the traffic i e in order to accuse me of using an unauthorized strong encryption technique they would have to take both keys out of escrow run them against my ciphertext and draw a blank i was thinking about this also it s quite possible the system transmits in clear the serial number of the device being used that way they can start a tap get the serial number and use the warrant for the first tap to get the key if they tap someone who s apparently using encryption but don t find that prefix then they ll assume it s an un authorized encryption scheme this doesn t handle superencrypted traffic if the clipper doesn t impose any unfortunate performance side effects there s no reason not to use it to superencrypt a stream of triple des encrypted traffic that way your traffic looks normal and perhaps anyone desiring to listen in won t even bother since they know nobody s going to really trust crypto that has classified internals for important stuff mjr
