SKIPJACK IN POPULAR SCI

[Sandy <72114.1712@CompuServe.COM>]

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  SANDY SANDFORT               Reply to:  ssandfort@attmail.com
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Cypherpunks,

There is a short piece about Skiptap, er, Skipjack, in the
electronics section of the October "Popular Science."  It has a
pretty good diagram and a photo of the Mykotronx chip.

It says "Bill Clinton himself decided that the U.S. government
will promote a new encoding chip for communications."  It also
quotes a guy from NIST who says, "Once you accept the fact that
law enforcement has to do its job, this is a good solution."
(Fortunately, Cypherpunks generally *don't* accept that "fact.")

A vice president at Mykotronx, John Droge, tried to create the
impression that Skipjack just sort of happened to them.  He also
gave away the real party at interest.  He said, "They [the NSA]
came to us with a neat equation and said, `Here you go.'"

The article mentioned that 85% of the comments at recent federal
hearings were hostile or skeptical.  Amazingly, the article never
quoted May, Hughes or Gilmore.  Where has this writer been?

 S a n d y

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