Re: clipper plans 4 sale

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

At 04:18 PM 12/24/96 -0500, Adam Shostack wrote:

>	Many people will believe it.  Its easy to construct the case
>that the ITARs, as they apply to things in the public domain, thing
>implemented outside the US, things designed outside the US, are just
>silly.  Its much harder to make that argument about Skipjack,
>especially as you can't legally export the chips.

When Clipper was first proposed, in April of 1993, as I recall one of the 
government-types promoting it claimed that it would be exportable "except to 
terrorist-sponsoring countries like Libya."

This made me laugh:  It seemed to me that if Clipper codes were kept and 
available to the US government, you'd expect that they'd WANT Libya to get 
those phones!  In fact, they'd air-drop them in the thousands, right?  After 
all, this would make other countries more dependant on the US for 
cooperation, and they'd be more pliable as a result, right?



Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com