From: tuinstra@sunspot.ece.clarkson.edu.soe (Dwight Tuinstra)
Subject: re: WH announcement
Reply-To: tuinstra@sunspot.ece.clarkson.edu.soe
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 70
Nntp-Posting-Host: sunspot.ece.clarkson.edu
Cc: tuinstra


Q:   Who was consulted?  The Congress?  Industry?

A:   We have on-going discussions with Congress and industry on
     encryption issues, and expect those discussions to intensify
     as we carry out our review of encryption policy.  We have
     briefed members of Congress and industry leaders on the
     decisions related to this initiative.

Congress??  So we're playing politics before we talk to CPSR, academia,
the public, internet users?  I`ve heard of top-down design, but top-down 
democracy?? [Just whose state/district are the chip manufacturers in?]

Q:   If the Administration were unable to find a technological
     solution like the one proposed, would the Administration be
     willing to use legal remedies to restrict access to more
     powerful encryption devices?

A:   This is a fundamental policy question which will be
     considered during the broad policy review. [...bs about
     the wonderfulness of the key escrow system...]

     The Administration is not saying, "since encryption
     threatens the public safety and effective law enforcement,
     we will prohibit it outright" (as some countries have
     effectively done); 

They'll just provide an easily-compromised version to JQ Public.

                         nor is the U.S. saying that "every
     American, as a matter of right, is entitled to an
     unbreakable commercial encryption product."  

Maybe we need a CRA -- Cryptographic Rights Amendment.

                                                  There is a
     false "tension" created in the assessment that this issue is
     an "either-or" proposition.  Rather, both concerns can be,
     and in fact are, harmoniously balanced through a reasoned,
     balanced approach such as is proposed with the "Clipper
     Chip" and similar encryption techniques.

Nice lullaby.  But why am I not soothed?

----------------
Also, 

In article 15472@leland.Stanford.EDU, arc@leland.Stanford.EDU (Andrew Richard Conway) writes:
>P.S. I can't work out why the US government doesn't want to sell
>them overseas. After all, they are rather easy for US interests to decode,
>so make a perfect tool for industrial/military espionage...lulling 
>anyone stupid enough to buy it into a false sense of security. You will
>notice that there is NO mention anywhere about safety for non-Americans.
>

Why repeat themselves?  It appears to some (and the story looks pretty
convincing to me, too) that the Justice Department stole a case-tracking
system, modified it, and distributed it to "friendly" police and suchlike
agencies around the world, eg. the Canadian Mounties.  Of course, I have 
no doubt they swore Scout's Honor that there were no backdoors.

With that kind of intelligence, who'd want to be swamped with terabytes
of commercial traffic?

+========================================================================+
|  dwight tuinstra             best:  tuinstra@sandman.ece.clarkson.edu  |
|                         tolerable:  tuinstrd@craft.camp.clarkson.edu   |
|                                                                        |
|        "Homo sapiens: planetary cancer??  ...  News at six"            |
+========================================================================+
