waashk/20ng huggingface dataset:
Clipper Chip is a response to the fact that there is no business or professional body in a position to establish a standard and provide chipsets to implement it for analog or digial transmission systems.  RSA might be in position to do it, if they had active cooperation of a couple of manufacturers of cellular phones or desktop phones.  Large companies in the voice/data comm business are out, because they all have contracts with the gov which would be used to pressure them.  If we, as professionals in crypto organizations, EFF, etc. were to put our collective minds and interests toward establishing a crypto standard for transmission, and getting our companies to implement it, we might avoid government control.  Otherwise, I think it will happen to us by default.  Gov isn't probably strong enough or foolish enough to prevent strong crypt.  They are strong enough, and we may be foolish enough, to push through the Clipper Chip.  Is RSA independt of the gov enough to spearhead this?  I, for one, would *gladly* pay royalties via purchasing secure phones.  If not this, we should provide an algorithm which can be implemented in either SW or HW and publish it, then push to make it the defacto standard in the way that PGP and RIPEM are becoming such.  We are opposing, charging the bunker.  We should be nimble and clever. The gov is strong, not clever.  Lew
Ted Dunning (ted@nmsu.edu) wrote: :  : nobody seems to have noticed that the clipper chip *must* have been : under development for considerably longer than the 3 months that : clinton has been president.  this is not something that choosing : choosing bush over clinton would have changed in the slightest; it has : been in the works for some time.  Actually, many of us have noted this. We have noted that the program started at least 4 years ago, that the contracts with VLSI Technology and Microtoxin were let at least 14 months ago, that production of the chips is well underway, and so forth.  Nobody I know has claimed Clinton intitiated the program. But he chose to go ahead with it.   -Tim May
In article <1993Apr26.104320.10398@infodev.cam.ac.uk> rja14@cl.cam.ac.uk (Ross Anderson) writes: >I'm afraid this doesn't work either. We can pick up laptop screens without any >problem. > >Most of the so-called `low radiation' monitors are also useless. The description >turns out to a marketing assertion rather than an engineering one. > >We thought there might be a market for a monitor which was not as hugely >expensive as the military Tempest kit, but which was well enough shielded to >stop eavesdropping using available receivers. We built a prototype, it works, >and it's still sitting on my lab bench. Commercial interest was exactly zero. > >In the absence of open standards, a monitor which really is `low radiation' >(and costs 500 dollars more) can't compete against a monitor which just >claims to be `low radiation' (and whose only extra cost of production is the >pretty blue sticker on the box). > >Ross  I heard somewhere (can't name the source) that TEMPEST does not necessarily pick-up just CRTs, but it can pick up emissions from almost any chip.  If that is true, the kind monitor would not make any difference becuase everything on the screen can be picked-up from the video controller.  Can anybody verify or refute this?
In article <41@shockwave.win.net>, jhupp@shockwave.win.net (Jeff Hupp) writes: >     The NSA's charter forbids them from doing any purely domestic > intelligence work, I would think that even providing assistance in > development of the Skipjack algorithom is a violation of that charter.  > But as with any intrenched government agency, they will do what they > think is expedent.  There are other laws and directives which bear upon the subject.  For example, the National Computer Security Act of 1987 specifically directs NBS [sic] to work with NSA on developing security standards for civilian Federal computers.  (Pick up the bill from cpsr.org; it also includes a report describing it, and some of the legislative history, including concerns about NSA's involvement.)  Note also that NSA is specifically charged with running the National Computer Security Center,  -- to quote the aforementioned report -- ``NSA also will work with industries at the DOD Computer Security Center to develop security standards for private sector use.''
Tarl Neustaedter (tarl@coyoacan.sw.stratus.com) wrote:  : It means that the EFF's public stance is complicated with issues irrelevant : to the encryption issue per se. There may well be people who care about : the encryption issue who don't care to associate themselves with the : network erotica issue (or may even disagree with the EFF's position).  Perhaps these encryption-only types would defend the digitized porn if it was posted encrypted?
In article <1993Apr21.041033.16550@news.clarkson.edu> tuinstra@signal.ece.clarkson.edu.soe writes: >Clipper will make criminals out of cops.  Do we want to do this to our >police forces? 	The War on some drugs has already turned alot of police into 	criminals.  This is yet another nail in the constitution's coffin.
I am testing IDEA block cipher implementations for correctness and needs some golden test vectors.  I've looked through the postscript IDEA chapter but the single example gives me zero degrees of freedom.  I'll contact the inventor if necessary but since we are NOT paying him money for use of his invention, I'd like to offload this from him.  Anybody got vectors? (No disease vectors, please).
In article <1r6g1n$rvb@access.digex.net> steve-b@access.digex.com (Steve Brinich) writes: > > Somebody asked me what was wrong about overreacting in cases such as this. > > > > The reason is very simple:  How many people do you want to die in a riot? > >In a new Civil War? > >  Not me -- which is precisely why the government must be cut off at the >knees when it pulls stunts like this, lest the situation worsen to the point >where extreme measures are required.   Fine then.  Cut them off with pen and paper, and not the sword.
al@escom.COM (Al Donaldson) writes: >amolitor@nmsu.edu (Andrew Molitor) writes: >>Yes, those evil guys in the FBI can probably, with some >>effort, abuse the system. I got news for you, if the evil guys in >>the FBI decide they want to persecute you, they're gonna, ... > >And if Richard Nixon had had this kind of toy, he wouldn't have had >to send people into the Watergate. >  	This appears to be generic calling upon the name of the anti-christ. Just for the hell of it, let's destroy this remark. Let us imagine that the executive branch actually could extract keys from the escrow houses without anyone knowing, or telling. Now what? Dick has 80 bits of data. What the hell's he gonna do with it?  	1) Trot around to the telco and say 'we'd like an unauthorised decrypting tap'. Uh huh. 	2) Break in to watergate and install his own tap (so his people still do have to break in, neat, huh?) record some noise, then get the Executive Branch Phone Decryption Box (huh? they've got one? Goodness, wait 'til the washington post gets hold of this) and decrypt the noise. 	3) More likely, stare at the key, and say 'Oh, hell it's not worth all this bloody hassle'  	Truth is, even granted *lots* of covert power on the part of the Executive Branch, this system is *more* difficult to tap with than POTS gear. The fact that it is easier to tap than some hypothetical system neither you nor I am going to place on our phones is neither here nor there.  	The only rational concerns I am seeing raised are:  	a) is the key really just chopped in half, and not some XOR arrangement? That is, has some egregious technical error been built in to the plan? 	b) is this is the first step toward strict regulation of strong encryption?   >But that's not really the issue.  The real issue is whether this  >will be used to justify a ban against individuals' use of private  >(i.e., anything else) encryption methods.  	This is b), of course. I suspect not. If the government actually wanted to make such regs, they'd just do it. A few hundred people on Usenet yelling about it wouldn't even slow the machine down.  	Besides, who is this mysterious 'they' who's going to take away all our rights the instant we let our guard down? Congress? That gang of buffoons can't even balance their checkbooks. The FBI? But.. they don't make the laws. The NSA? Ditto. The white house? Bill Clinton is probably still looking for the bathroom. It's a big place, after all.  	Andrew
The system, or 'family', key would appear to be cryptographically useless, since *every* chip must know it and be able to remove its effects from the bitstream.  I daresay that it will be widely known almost immediately after this system is deployed, and since it's been pointed out that there is not a separate decrypt key -- the same key is used for both encryption and decryption -- there goes any benefit to the use of a system-wide key in SkipJack.
Amanda Walker (amanda@intercon.com) wrote: : uni@acs.bu.edu (Shaen Bernhardt) writes: : [deletions] :  : > How can you reconcile the administrations self proclaimed purpose of  : > providing law enforcement with access to encrypted data without making  : > the clipper system the only crypto available in the U.S... ? :  : The Second and Fourth Amendments do come to mind.   :   I think i heard someplace (misc.legal?, comp.org.eff.talk?) that the courts have pretty much eliminated the fourth amendment already.
pdc@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Paul Crowley) writes: >How fast do the fastest modems go?  The Shannon limit for voice lines is likely somewhere around 25kbps. We are rapidly approaching it. The fastest affordable full-duplex modems currently on the market are V32bis, which is 14400bps.  >How far can voice be compressed?  CELP manages to sound decent at 4800 bps.  In theory, if you built a speech recognition system that turned voice into ASCII, and a perfect synthesis system on the other end that sounded just like the person you were speaking to, you could get it down to the information content of the speech.  With various kinds of LPC, you can get it down to 2400 bps or prehaps even less, at which point it sounds horrible.  4800 bps is more than adequite for our purposes.  -- Perry Metzger		pmetzger@shearson.com
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----  In article <strnlghtC5t3nH.Is1@netcom.com> strnlght@netcom.com (David Sternlight) writes:     In article <1993Apr20.032623.3046@eff.org> kadie@eff.org (Carl M. Kadie) writes:      >So, don't just think of replacements for clipper, also think of front    >ends.     This only makes sense if the government prohibits alternative non-escrowed    encryption schemes. Otherwise, why not just use the front end without    clipper?     David  David, they (== the gov't) have already said that they hope to DO THIS in the long run...  - -derek  PGP 2 key available upon request on the key-server: 	pgp-public-keys@toxicwaste.mit.edu  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.2  iQBuAgUBK9TknDh0K1zBsGrxAQEAQgLFEFNH9HlHyoVHuWR5RWD9Y+mBrXkYKWsC aAZO1x1WXhca5FG+UK9/TYYoBpBTLqGSUrgKgdzPXWFH8/+ZXgXrggwf6wP2eDSt BYCCYb9JRX3LoZcg5whgOi4= =8H7Y -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
russotto@vnet.IBM.COM (Matthew T. Russotto) writes:  >>In the Clipper case, a representative body of experts is going to be allowed >>to audit it, and we'll have assurances (maybe even from the President) that >>other than the escrowed keys there are no back doors. While some may not >>have confidence in that (I am not among them)  >Wow, assurances from the President.  Why, those are almost as good as >campaign promises!  I don't see why ANYONE wouldn't have confidence in >those.  I don't think mr. Clinton can even understand the technical details of the clipper encryption scheme. So, his "assurances" are of no value at al, if he gives them he just says what a panel of experts(?) told him. If I lived in the USA, I would hope those experts were not paid by the <fill here you favorite 3-letter combination>.
kubo@zariski.harvard.edu (Tal Kubo) writes:  [...] >The EFF has been associated with efforts to prevent the banning of sex >and pictures newsgroups at various universities. [...]  So what? Justices William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, John Paul Stevens, and Byron White are associated with a plurality Supreme Court decision that prevented the removal of "anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy" books from a public high school library [_Board of Education v. Pico_ (1982)]. Does this mean that they could no longer defend free expression and privacy?  - Carl
In article <C5nn9I.D5q@news.claremont.edu> ebrandt@jarthur.claremont.edu (Eli Brandt) writes: :In article <1993Apr16.181040.9381@qualcomm.com> karn@servo.qualcomm.com (Phil Karn) writes: :>It looks like Dorothy Denning's wrong-headed ideas have gotten to the :>Administration even sooner than we feared. : :I'd lay long odds that it was the other way around.  Clinton didn't :just pull this plan out of any bodily orifices; the NSA has to have :been working on it for years.  While it's possible that Denning (and :other prominent people) just happened to start arguing for such a :system, it seems more likely that there was a suggestion involved. :If this guess is wrong, I apologize.  I'm sure Dorothy Denning is an honest person and wouldn't lie to us. Simply think up a question to ask her about her involvement, but be very careful to phrase it in such a way that there can be no Jesuitical evasion or a true but wholly misleading answer.  In this country, MI5 are *experts* at answering these questions; for instance there was a British journalist (Jonathon Moyle) killed in South America a couple of years ago.  Parliament asked "Was he an MI5 employee" "No." - turns out afterwards he wasn't paid, therefore wasn't an employee. They could equally have said he wasn't an agent - he went abroad on his private business with no brief from MI5, but was interviewed and debriefed at length only *on his return*.
The stragegy of the government is interesting.  The real fear comes from them doing more than this.  This is a voluntary program, and thus harder for us to object to on the surface.  Their strategy is a business one rather than legal one.  They are pushing to get a standard in place, a secret standard, and if they get it as a standard then they will drive competitors out of the market. It will be legal to sell better, untapable encryption that doesn't have registered keys, but it will be difficult, and thus not a plan for most phone companies.  You see, with clipper chip phones you'll be able to talk to any cellular company, or other phones or ports because they will follow the standard.  AT&T has already announced a clipper chip encryption product.  The government has marketed hard to get major vendors to use these chips.   If they get enough market share, they will rule.  And thus there will be very little market for systems that can't be tapped by the police.  The public isn't that concerned about it now, after all.  They freely do calls that anybody with an old TV can listen to today!  They won't pay big extra bucks for proprietary phones that secure them only from the police.  Well, some people will buy these phones, but they will only work with other proprietary phones, so the market will be small and the phones expensive.  Unless they are made in numbers large enough to sell them cheap, only the Mob will buy them.  And this means that the FBI will want to track the customer lists of better encryption phones, because "the only reason a person would want one is to evade the police."  Interesting.
In article <PMETZGER.93Apr20065402@snark.shearson.com> pmetzger@snark.shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger) writes:  >Hmmm. We must assume that generating the unit key U from the serial >number N rather than generating it from a randomly selected U1 and U2 >is an intentional way of assuring a "fail safe" for the government -- >U is completedly determined given S1, S2 and N.   [...] >If S1 and S2 do not change, even if they remain secret I wonder if >they can somehow be back-derived given enough unit key/serial number >pairs. [...]  Maybe 300 such pairs suffice to reconstruct S1 and S2? By such a back- door (in the encryption algorithm perhaps) it would be possible (for   the manufacturer) to get the keys of all chips that were programmed in  one session. This would not, btw, enable anybody else to retrieve the  keys in the same way because they'll never get a bunch of 300 (N,U)  pairs with identical S1 and S2. (Note that these have to be constant  for the whole batch by the very nature of the procedure, i.e., they  have to be typed in manually by the `random number supplying agents'!)  And I was wondering why they'll always do 300 chips in one session ...  Since the procedure described by Ms Denning imposes high costs on the  production of every chip (at least three persons for one hour each,  plus the cost of a laptop finally blown to pieces in a spectacular,  Hollywood-like bonfire; add travelling expenses, drinks and lighting,  divide the sum by 300) there won't be a larger demand -- not from the  private sector anyway.   And let me mention one other thought that certainly has occurred to all  the notoriously paranoid people in this group before: Who is going to  verify that _no_ interested party will perform tempest attacks on the  vault??   Where there's so much smoke and mirrors -- there can't be a nice, honest  fire but something really worth hiding ...
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----  In article <1qn1ic$hp6@access.digex.net> pcw@access.digex.com (Peter Wayner) writes:     2) The system is vulnerable to simple phone swapping attacks    like this. Criminals will quickly figure this out and go to    town.  Depends..  Its possible that the phone sends its serial number in the clear at some specified interval... So all a listener needs to do is get that SN, and then get the key for it...  So swapping phones isn't a problem (for the gov't, that is).  They still know that this line belongs to you, so they just watch the line and see the SN, and then they get the key for that SN...     In either case, I think we need to look at this a bit deeper."'jbl)mW:wxlD2  Well, I think this is understood.  The major problem is that a lot of people just don't trust this key escrow stuff, and the fact that the algorithms are classified...  So, yes, a lot of this needs to be looked at closer!  - -derek  PGP 2 key available upon request on the key-server: 	pgp-public-keys@toxicwaste.mit.edu  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.2  iQBuAgUBK9EbXDh0K1zBsGrxAQHzcALCAlvWtnvi7aySWf565id1MN++nsybTwQI jQLgPKX/4tx6qjGC69BUQRZAtMQutkoVnvx/MqT5EZFM7uundRWD4cOwbb7CC4Gy gT7JtLRqU0aF9VSf4SGNQqg= =fGRj -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
In article <TOM.93Apr21114536@amber.ssd.csd.harris.com>,   tom@ssd.csd.harris.com (Tom Horsley) writes: > >This isn't intended to be a flame or anything, I am just really curious >how to manufacture these things while still maintaining the key escrow >security without simply saying "trust the manufacturer, they won't look".  Without getting into the *really* *thorny* questions about reverse engineering and all of that, let me just point out that there already exist gate arrays and suchlike that have what's known as a security fuse which can be programmed after you've verified all other programming -- this makes it impossible to read out the programming of the device (again, ignoring the reverse engineering questions).  Speaking from experience here: I had to completely reinvent one of my designs some six or seven years ago when the disk file was zapped, the backups were all bad, and the devices were unreadable because of the security fuses. Made me appreciate the value of printouts.  ;-)  So on this point at least there's not so much worry.  But whether or not we can get the chips made reliably and securely is really secondary to the question of whether use of the chip is itself likely to be secure, methinks.
hIn article <Apr22.185314.14420@yuma.ACNS.ColoState.EDU> ns111310@LANCE.ColoState.Edu (Nathaniel Sammons) writes:  >1) I think that most of us can afford a stamp and an envelope, and the >cost of printing out a letter. > >2) If some kind soul out there would write a letter, and upload it to  >the net, everyone could capture it, print it out, and snail-mail it >out to their local congressional critter. > >BTW>> I'm working on one.  Far more effective than mass mailing of a standard letter (this is taken usually to represent one pressure group) is a set of individual letters.  Perhaps Nathaniel Sammons or someone else would like to prepare a set of "talking points" from which individuals could compose their own letters.
The Clipper chip is just the culmination of Dorthy Denning et all. But lets ignore that for the moment.  The fundamental question is:Can the government stop me from using encryption?  Ignoring for the moment the question of patented processes (such as Public Keys), can the government stop me from using an encryption process?  If the answer is yes then what freedom we have in this country is truly gone and its time to get out the guns or the lawyers (depending upon which causes more damage and to whom).  However assuming that I can still encrypt things as I please, who cares about the clipper chip? As far as I'm concerned a phone line is insecure PERIOD. I don't care if they encrypt it 10 ways from sunday, if I didn't do the encrypting, I don't trust it. This is the attitude that everyone else should have. Instead of worrying about a clipper chip, simply connect your handset to your computer and feed the voice single through, process, encrypt, and transmit over the phone. The guy on the other hand then does the same in reverse.  Can't work you say? No Standard you say? Obviously you have never uses PGP.  Anyone who expects the government to protect their freedoms is kidding themselves. Only you can protect your own freedoms.  One final thought addressed to EFF: 	1.Do you support the implementation of ANY form of 	encryption where the encryption key must be revealed? 	2.If you do, why? If not, why? 	3.What SPECIFIC actions are you planning to take to either 	support or stop this proposal? 	4.If you do not support this proposal, what alternatives do 	you offer?  				The Jester
Having read the various "Clipper" announcements on the net over the last few  days and a LOT of uninformed speculation about the chip, its uses, government plots, etc, I have the following questions.    1) What does the "Clipper chip" actually implement? Just the Skipjack 	cryptographic algorithm? Or does it also implement a "chip to chip" 	communications protocol? If it does implement a communications 	protocol, can it be used as just a "crypt chip" also.    2) Where can the chip specifications and spec sheets be obtained?    3) Who may purchase them and under what conditions?    4) Are there restrictions as to how the chip may be used in a system?    5) The security of the algorithm and the encrypted communications does 	not appear to require that the "Family key" be a secret. Why is 	it a secret? What happens when the "family key" becomes well known? 	If it's a secret to make traffic analysis more difficult, does 	the "Law enforcement message" contain any random information? 	How much and how random is it?    6) Can the chip be programmed to reveal the "Unit key"? The chip "serial 	number"? Any of the programming parameters?  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Raymond S. Brand					rbrand@usasoc.soc.mil
In article <1993Apr21.154122.13015@csus.edu> sphughes@sfsuvax1.sfsu.edu (Shaun P. Hughes) writes: >In article <1r3jgbINN35i@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> jgfoot@minerva.cis.yale.edu writes: >> >>Perhaps these encryption-only types would defend the digitized porn if it >>was posted encrypted? >> >>These issues are not as seperable as you maintain. > >Now why would anyone "post" anything encrypted? Encryption is only of  >use between persons who know how to decrypt the data.  You mean something like Uuencode? It isn't super crypto, but it is encrypted.  Scott