Re: Clipper III on the table

["Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>]

stewarts@ix.netcom.com writes:
> Hip Hip Hooray!  Clinton will finally let us use _some_
> 20+year-old encryption code, which has been known to be relatively
> weak for 15 years, as long as we give them all our keys!  What a guy!

I personally don't mind forcing escrow of 56 bit keys so long as
people can use 128 bit keys without escrow. >:-)

> I assume he's partly doing this to make a big "See, I'm in favor
> of high-tech trade and crime-fighting" push in time for the election,
> and unlike RC4/40, cracking DES on general-purpose processors
> _is_ a big enough job that probably can't do a distributed crack
> in two weeks.

We really have to work on cracking DES at least once -- it would
substantially reduce the wind in the Administration's sails.

Perry