Re: NYT op-ed May 8

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

David T. Witkowski says:
> Take two criminals, Danny Dumbo and Sam Smart.  If Danny is too dumb to use
> alternative encryption, where does it follow that he would use any sort of
> encryption at all?  Thus whether his equipment is Clippered or not, the
> gov't could easily tap his line.  Whereas Sam is smart enough to choose
> some other form of encryption that the gov't can't monitor.  So what good
> does Clipper do in either case?  And thus, why does it even exist?  If the
> gov't needs Clipper to secure its own communications, why don't they just
> sanctify PGP or something likewise?

Last week, the Wall Street Journal had an excellent article on a drug
smuggling ring that got caught -- they were the folks who brought in
flights of cocaine for Pablo Escobar. They had an excellent
intelligence network, flew spotter planes to provide them with
information on the movement of government planes, etc. They were
finally captured one day by pure accident as a result of a chain of
events starting from a chance unscheduled overflight by an AWACS plane
on a training mission.

It is unlikely that they would be so stupid as to use government
cryptography.

Criminals are sometimes not smart, but the ones who are a supposed
threat to us will rapidly learn what crypto to use, just as even
stupid people can learn to use cars and learn the difference between
stick and automatic.

Perry