white house wiretap chip disinformation sheet fascinating most of the content of the white house announcements was in what was not said it gives us almost nothing of value threatens to take away a lot and does it with a sincere smile on its face and the nice friendly word management fact sheet public encryption management the first thing it doesn t say is we re giving you stronger encryption what it says is the u s government has developed a microcircuit that not only provides privacy through encryption that is substantially more robust than the current government standard but also permits escrowing of the keys needed to unlock the encryption the system for the escrowing of keys will allow the government to gain access to encrypted information only with appropriate legal authorization but des is strong enough that only the government can break it now so the major effect is to make it easier for government to break at best it makes it more difficult for the nsa to break since they need to get one of the two escrowed keys to do a brute force search for the other bit key similarly it didn t say we re making encryption is commercially available because encryption is already commercially available including forms the nsa may not be able to break like triple des or idea and phone companies could offer des based systems now if they were convinced the government would let them and they could make enough money the next thing it didn t say is we re making encryption legal because of course encryption has always been legal and the president can t change the first amendment merely by decree what it did say was in making this decision i do not intend to prevent the private sector from developing or the government from approving other microcircuits or algorithms that are equally effective in assuring both privacy and a secure key escrow system which clearly means we re making encryption illegal unless we get your keys soon once business buys into this another thing it didn t say is we re going to ask congress for money to do lots more wiretapping because of course there s a budget crisis and congress might debate the policy issues or not give them the cash what it did say was the attorney general will procure and utilize encryption devices to the extent needed to preserve the government s ability to conduct lawful electronic surveillance and to fulfill the need for secure law enforcement communications further the attorney general shall utilize funds from the department of justice asset forfeiture super surplus fund to effect this purchase which means we ve got money congress can t control and we re going to buy lots of wiretapping equipment with it to detect non approved crypto that s what preserve the government s ability to conduct surveillance means pray for peace bill bill stewart wcs anchor att com at t bell labs m holmdel nj no i m from new jersey i only work in cyberspace white house commect line fax
