re text of white house announcement and q as on clipper chip encryption in article c l t gci dove nist gov clipper csrc ncsl nist gov clipper chip announcement writes q suppose a law enforcement agency is conducting a wiretap on a drug smuggling ring and intercepts a conversation etc great nice choice of bad guys to convince everyone how bad unrestricted encryption is why not use a child molester instead of course the word suspect is never used here so i guess these people have already been convicted and are operating this drug ring from their jail cells how about this question instead q suppose a law enforcement agency is conducting a wiretap on a political opponent of a senior administration official and intercepts a conversation kinda changes your interpretation of the event doesn t it and yes the presence of the clipper chip does change things because it will not only give the people talking on the phone a false sense of security it will also give federal law enforcement agencies the justification to deny use of strong encryption methods that are inconvenient to them dang it all it s supposed to be inconvenient but not impossible that s the only sure way to make sure that abuses are minimized while still allowing legitimate law enforcement access q how strong is the security in the device how can i be sure how strong the security is a this system is more secure than many other voice encryption systems readily available today while the algorithm will remain classified to protect the security of the key escrow system we are willing to invite an independent panel of cryptography experts to evaluate the algorithm to assure all potential users that there are no unrecognized vulnerabilities uh huh sure i predict that within two months weeks of the chip s debut the full technical details will be posted to sci crypt and if this has any impact on the security of the key escrow system then we ve been lied to any cryptosystem worth its salt can withstand the light of public scrutiny and there is no way you can be sure that an algorithm has no unrecognized vulnerabilities unless you have half the world trying to break it for a decade or so even then you gotta be careful michael t palmer a man is crazy who writes a secret in any m t palmer larc nasa gov other way than one which will conceal it ripem key on server from the vulgar roger bacon
