Re: FW: James Fallows on Clipper

[peb@netcom.com (Paul E. Baclace)]

Re: The Atlantic, June 1994.

The article is another "Nothing to Worry About".  The article unfortunately
occurs in the same issue that has a feature article about the 
possibility of Russian gangs obtaining nuclear weapons which also
details how the coup attempt was observed by the NSA and Bush
decided to let the good guys know so that the attempt could be
thwarted.  The NSA opposed letting them know since it would 
reveal their abilities, but Bush took the chance that this was
not as bad as having a bunch of hardliners controllng the big
bombs.  This feature article will certainly give people the
impression that crypto must be controlled or is at least a
very important millitary matter.

Now the NSA can't listen in, the article reported, but who knows
what they've done since then. 

I hope to write a letter responding to Fallows' article, but
right off I noticed some errors: he states that the millitary
and intelligence services will use Clipper themselves when in
fact, it would not be approved for secret information. (Recently
someone noted that this is probably due to the key handling methods, 
but it could certainly be due to escrow itself as being risky.)

Additionally, he brushes aside the accepted cryptographic methods
(open inspection and testing) as being frivolous.  (This seems
to be a result of the NSA envy and pride runs through the article.)


Paul E. Baclace
peb@netcom.com