Re: Clipper III on the table

[The Deviant <deviant@pooh-corner.com>]

On Tue, 1 Oct 1996 stewarts@ix.netcom.com wrote:

> Date: Tue, 01 Oct 1996 10:06:40 -0700
> From: stewarts@ix.netcom.com
> To: cypherpunks@toad.com
> Subject: Re: Clipper III on the table
> 
> 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 have to point out that there is no "relative victory".  We have neither
won in whole nor in part.

> 
> 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,
>

If he even figures that out... he's probably doing it because some advisor
said it wouldn't make a difference to crypto, and that advisor would
basicly be right.

>
> 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.  But still, get real - the NBS/NIST kept recertifying DES
> every 5 years only because it was in widespread use and there weren't
> good fast alternatives for the first couple of years (except triple-DES,
> which on the computers of the time was annoyingly slow.)  
>

Good point.

>
> There were far more powerful systems like Diffie-Hellman and later RSA 
> that were too slow for general use and are now fairly practical,
> but they're not letting us use them....
> 

Not _letting_ you?  Exactly which one is the government saying you _CAN'T_
use?  I've seen you can't export, you can't use in government work, etc...
but never once have I seen a law be _passed_ that said you couldn't use
any form of crypto (and I'd like to keep it that way)

> 
> #			Thanks;  Bill

 --Deviant
They seem to have learned the habit of cowering before authority even when
not actually threatened.  How very nice for authority.  I decided not to
learn this particular lesson.
                -- Richard Stallman