From: Peter Wayner <pcw@access.digex.net>
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 93 11:48:12 PDT
To: dsobel@washofc.cpsr.org
Subject: Re: >Clipper trapdoor?
Message-ID: <199308121845.AA12068@access.digex.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Dave Sobel has been wondering just how the Escrow Agency will
check up on the requests for keys that it gets from the NSA.
The procedures aren't decided yet, but from my understanding
of the presentation given at the last CSSAB meeting in Washington,
the Escrow agencies won't have a person/phone to escrow id number
mapping that would allow them to check if a request for a key
is valid. 

There are two reasons for this. 1) It would be pretty useless because
people could sell their phones at garage sales or give them as
Christmas gifts and screw up the list. 2) This is also a "feature".
If two of the escrow agents (from different agencies) decided to
go bad, then they wouldn't be able to look up their enemy Bob's 
escrow key by name. They would need some of the real-time hardware
and access to the family key. Presumably, this would be handled
by a third party. 

-Peter