Re: Clipper

Clipper is currently only rated for non-classified use.
It could be done securely, assuming there aren't any unannounced backdoors,
by simply using chips for which the keys are not escrowed, or are only
held by the military and protected with certain classification levels,
but they'd have to do a couple of things to use it.
The most important is making sure that a secure Clipperphone
is only used to talk to other secure Clipperphones,
and in addition you'd probably want to make sure the users
have some way of knowing they're talking to appropirately cleared users,
since it's sometimes hard to tell if the voice on teh other end of the phone
really has the authorization it claims it does.  
Features like these are built into STU-II and other classified-use approved
phones, but aren't likely to be built into vanilla Clipperphones.
It may be possible to do that with Tessera, though; I'd have to see more
information than they're likely to give out....

	Bill
# Bill Stewart  AT&T Global Information Solutions, aka NCR Corp
# 6870 Koll Center Parkway, Pleasanton CA, 94566 Phone 1-510-484-6204 fax-6399
# email bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com billstewart@attmail.com
# ViaCrypt PGP Key IDs 384/C2AFCD 1024/9D6465

It may be true that Clipper has not been qualified yet for classified
data, I not sure about that, but Tessera will be used in DMS, the
defense messaging system.  That WILL carry classified info.

Peace ..Tom