FYI: NSA actually against clipper?

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: whitfield.diffie () eng sun com
Sender: Whitfield.Diffie () eng sun com
Date: Tue, 18 May 1993 at 19h18
Subject: NSA actually against clipper?

> The NSA, our souces say, would like nothing more than to see the
> Clipper chip fail, resulting in the outlaw of encryption altogether

    It seems to me that the most important issue in the whole Clipper
project is acceptance of the notion that the government's need to read
traffic exceeds the individual's right to protect it.  Getting Clipper
through will go a long way toward establishing this.

    The technical details are far less important.  I actually think
that if the project is successful in popularizing cryptoequipment, it
will make it far more economical to manufacture or tinker together
equipment using other algorithms.

    If we grant the legitimacy of the objective, however, they will be
back in a few years saying, ``We thought that would be sufficient, but
it hasn't proved to be.  We really need to regulate the use of other
cryptographic systems.''
                                        Whit


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