Though the war is not over, this battle is ours!

[Vincent.Cate@FURMINT.NECTAR.CS.CMU.EDU]

DEADBEAT:
>I won't ask why the big deal is being made about all of this -- the
>agenda surrounding Clipper and friends is clearly a political one, not
>a technical one, so it is no surprise to hear even the technical voices,
>i.e., this list, trumpeting Blaze's paper as though it were a dagger in
>the heart of SKIPJACK.  But let's all acknowledge the technical weight
>and importance of Blaze's result for what it is: minuscule.

It is just a battle victory, and the war is not over, but the 
advantage is now ours.

If today they forced everyone to use Clipper chips, we could now 
do so and still not let the government tap in.

If some company wants to use government subsidized hardware to have
very high speed encryption, they could do so with security.

As Adam/Hall said, Blaze's work is better than pre-encryption in that
the government can not even get unit IDs.

As Perry said, you can interoperate with someone who isn't attempting
to avoid escrow. 

This flaw, along with the recent DSS flaw, undermine the confidence
people had in the NSA.  This will slow down Clipper.

In terms of controlling encryption in general, the government train has
been switched onto a dead-end track.   If they decide to go back
through the standards acceptance again, it could be a long time before
there are products.  The rest of the industry will not wait - PGP etc
are moving along rapidly.  So the government position is either live
with a flawed chip, or go back for a probably fatal delay.  Either way,
they loose.

It is a big deal, and we do have cause to party!!!!!   :-)

   -- Vince

(PS  I have to wonder if this was just flame-bate.)