From: brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton)
Subject: Re: Dorothy Denning opposes Clipper, Capstone wiretap chips
Organization: ClariNet Communications Corp.
Lines: 60

In article <C614BJ.BK6@agora.rain.com> jhart@agora.rain.com (Jim Hart) writes:
>"The security of the system should depend only on the secrecy of
>the keys and not on the secrecy of the algorithms" -- Dorothy Denning
>
>jhart@agora.rain.com


You're reading far too much into this (aside from the obvious fact
that you shouldn't hold anybody to what they wrote in a 10 year old
book in a rapidly changing field like this.)


Quite simply she says that the security should not DEPEND on the
secrecy of the algorithm.  A secret algorithm can still be secure,
after all, we just don't know it.  Only our level of trust is
affected, not the security of the system.

The algorithm *could* be RSA for all we know, which we believe to
be secure.

They have a much better reason to classify the algorithm than to
protect its security.  They want to protect its market share.

If they publish the algorithm, then shortly manufacturers would
make chips that implement the algorithm and standard but do not
use a key stored in escrow.  And of course, everybody would buy them.


The whole push of this chip is that by establishing a standard that
you can only use if you follow their rules, they get us to follow
their rules without enacting new laws that we would fight tooth and
nail.

Quite simply, with Clipper established, it would be much harder for
another encryption maker to define a new standard, to make phones that
can't talk to the leading phone companies.   The result is tappable
cryptography without laws forbidding other kinds, for 99% of the
populace.


To get untappable crypto, you would have to build a special phone that
runs on top of this system, and everybody you talk to would have to
have an indentical one.

That's the chicken and egg of crypto.  The government is using its
very special ability to solve chicken and egg problems of new
technologies to control this one in a way they like.


It's almost admirably clever.  When the EFF started, I posed the question here
"What are the police going to do when they wake up and discover they
can't wiretap?" and nobody here had an answer (or even thought it was
much of a question)

Then came the backdoor and Digital Telephony bills, which we fought.

Now we have their real answer, the cleverest of all.

-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Sunnyvale, CA 408/296-0366
