Re: Denning's misleading statements

[pcw@access.digex.net (Peter Wayner)]

>I've never met Dorothy Denning, so I hesitate to characterize
>her as a
>villainess. But certainly she's the only noted cryptographer I
>know of
>who's gone so far out on a limb to defend a position the vast
>majority of
>computer scientists, civil libertarians, and cryptographers
>scoff at. (And
>I don't just mean it is we libertarians and civil libertarians
>who are
>scoffing, I mean that nearly every noted expert who has
>carefully reviewed
>the various schemes to control crypto and to provide GAK has
>found them to
>be essentially unenforceable except via draconian police state
>methods, and
>maybe not even then.)

I believe that David Gelerntner, the professor of computer
science at Yale University injured by a UNABOMBER bomb, is also
a supporter of the Clipper chip. This may or may not be
something that arose from the bombing. But I'm not sure how many
cavaets and things he adds to his position. He may have changed
it. But then he's not exactly a cryptographer.

But, on the other side of the fence, I just passed a section in
_Takedown_ where Shimomura and the FBI agents decide that the
best place for the Clipper phones is "in the trunk." Apparently
they don't communicate with regular phones so they were
practically worthless.

-Peter