The Clipper Chip Proposal

[rittle@comm.mot.com (Loren James Rittle)]

Dear Mr. Vice President,

I am glad to hear that the Administration is willing to back down on
some of the highly unfavorable aspects of the Clipper Chip Proposal.

I strongly support mandated encryption key escrow for all government
employees, such as yourself, but none whatsoever on private
individuals or private-sector companies.  You all should be
accountable to the public.  Encryption key escrow of all government
employees' keys would help allow the public to hold rogue government
employees accountable for their inappropriate actions while in office
and hold great power over the public.

Get rid of the idea that would place mandatory key escrow on all
private users of your encryption standard and, in my opinion, you will
go down in history as the first person in government to actually help
make this country *more* free and *more* open.

I also support completely voluntary (i.e. no outside government coercion)
encryption key escrow for all private individuals and private-sector
companies, if they themselves so chose it.  I cannot see why a private
individual would ever want to have their encryption key in escrow, but
the private-sector company could gain many benefits.  As employee turn-
over occurs (by death or disgruntlement), a company would be insured
continued access to its information if it had an escrow plan in place.

Until the, so called, National Security concerns that are often
alluded to, yet never discussed, are bought fully to light on this
matter, it is very hard for me to swallow the real need for key escrow
for private citizens.  Given the low number of legal wiretaps that are
authorized each year, it just doesn't make sense to spend the kind of
money key escrow would require to implement it on the wide scale you
propose.

I understand that the White House has already conducted one study on
this issue of National Security as it relates to the key escrow issue.
Why don't you release this study in full instead of starting another
study?  I also understand that you have held up the FOIA request to
have this study released.  Why?  In a free society, it is just as
important to discuss the National Security issue in the open as the
citizen's privacy issue.

I leave you with a quote that describes the situation fairly well
for me:  ``You can have my personal encryption key when you pry it from
my cold, dead hands (and even then you can't have it because it has
been memorized and my brain is now dead).''

Sincerely,
Loren

--
Loren J. Rittle (rittle@comm.mot.com)          Ripem-1.2 MD5OfPublicKey:
Systems Technology Research (IL02/2240)        D2CE4A0F2BABF33AEF10C8C669DD782D
Motorola, Inc.                                 PGP-2.6 Key fingerprint:
(708) 576-7794                                 6810D8AB3029874DD7065BC52067EAFD