NSA and all this (was Let's see here ...

[jet@nas.nasa.gov (J. Eric Townsend)]

Paul Ferguson writes:
 > - The Clinton administration was presented with a golly-gee proposal
 > from either the NSA or the NIST (probably both) on a way to "offer"
 > public encryption. ('Nuf said.)

Actually, according to an ex-NSA'er I know, probably not the NSA.
They claim that this sort of thing gets attributed to them quite often
when they in fact have little, if anything, to do with "minor stuff
like that".  They went on to say "anybody who really *needs* to have
crypto cellular calls will already buys stuff from other countries and
modifies it for use here."  Think about the resources *that* implies.

Also, if the clipper thing is "minor", I'm not sure I want to know
what major is.