Clipper Chip Retreat

> I'll leave it to someone else to post the entire article, but the gist
> is that Gore sent a letter to Maria Cantwell saying that the
> administration is willing to consider alternatives to Clipper that are
> based upon nonclassified algrithms, and where the escrow agents are
> not government agencies.  They still insist on an escrow system,
> however.
 
This was an incredibly wise move on their part. We who still find 
the kindler gentler Clipper unacceptable are going to have a much harder
time convincing the public at large of our case. Before Clipper was such
a completley idiotic idea that almost anyone who wasn't on the NSA-s payrole
would automatically oppose it. It's still a bad idea, but a public-domain
algorithm clipper with non-governmental escrow agents isn't quite as 
obvously insane and inane as the previous clipper. 
 
On the other hand, we already have "clipper is bad", implanted in a lot of
people's minds. I don't think the administration is going to be able
to shake that loose quite so easily. And I do think we can convince many
people that new improved clipper is bad because of the escrow agency alone.
But it's not so easy. If the administation had come out with a version of this
kinder gentler clipper from the start, it might actually have been succesful.

>Date: Thu, 21 Jul 1994 14:54:22 -0400
>From: Jonathan Rochkind <jrochkin@cs.oberlin.edu>
>Subject: Clipper Chip Retreat

>It's still a bad idea, but a public-domain
>algorithm clipper with non-governmental escrow agents isn't quite as 
>obvously insane and inane as the previous clipper. 

Sorry, but the major Clipper flaw to me (and at least one corporate
executive with whom I've discussed this) *is* the very idea of key escrow.

My previous company used to sell computers to banks and funds transfer
agents.  A skeleton key to the crypto they used would be worth enough money
to warrant an expensive attack -- and the vulnerable place to attack is the
escrow databases.

Of course they could fix this vulnerability.  They could use the NSA HQ and
maybe Fort Knox as the escrow sites.  That would make us all more
comfortable with the scheme, wouldn't it?

 - Carl

Carl Ellison writes:
 > Sorry, but the major Clipper flaw to me (and at least one corporate 
 > executive with whom I've discussed this) *is* the very idea of key
 > escrow. 

Agreed; however, I don't see what good (from the standpoint of the key
escrow fan club) a non-classified Skipjack would be, other than to
make the banning of non-escrowed cryptography "ineluctable".

| GOOD TIME FOR MOVIE - GOING ||| Mike McNally <m5@tivoli.com>       |
| TAKE TWA TO CAIRO.          ||| Tivoli Systems, Austin, TX:        |
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>Date: Thu, 21 Jul 94 16:38:02 CDT
>From: m5@vail.tivoli.com (Mike McNally)
>Subject: Re: Clipper Chip Retreat
>
>Carl Ellison writes:
> > Sorry, but the major Clipper flaw to me (and at least one corporate 
> > executive with whom I've discussed this) *is* the very idea of key
> > escrow. 
>
>Agreed; however, I don't see what good (from the standpoint of the key
>escrow fan club) a non-classified Skipjack would be, other than to
>make the banning of non-escrowed cryptography "ineluctable".

I don't care about Skipjack.  If they want to publish, I'd read the paper,
but I'm plenty content with triple-DES for routine stuff and DTDTD
(des|tran|...) for more sensitive stuff.  (ditto with IDEA variants)

By key length, triple-DES is far more secure than Skipjack -- and probably
faster.  I don't remember the Clipper data rate off hand, but I just timed
RSAREF triple-DES (CBC) on my 66 MHz 486 (running Mach) at 112 KBytes/sec.
(That's just short of 1 Mb/sec.)  That would do for telephone speeds :-).

 - Carl