From: rarachel@prism.poly.edu (Arsen Ray Arachelian)
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 94 21:16:43 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: clipper pin-compatible chip
Message-ID: <9401250457.AA23248@prism.poly.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


Here's an idea right out of the Intel-Cyrix-AMD wars.

Once the clipper chips are common place, perhaps we could get some company
to build IDEA chips that are pin compatible with the clipper chip itself,
and perhaps even some switching socket where if you're calling a device
and want to use the clipper chip (due to compatibility reasons of course)
you activate the clipper chip socket.  If not, you flip the switch the other
way, and activate the IDEA chip.

All we need are pinout, timing/signal specs and a few cypherpunks who are/were
EE majors. :-)

The chip switching mechanism itself is no big deal.  In the worse case
we could adopt an Atari/Nintendo type solution where you have a socket
for a plug in cartridge which contains the encryption chip of your choice.

You then call up your friend and tell him to use his IDEA cart and you
do the same.  Or RSA, or anything you like.

If we could convince hardware manufactures to include chip sockets, this
won't be an issue any longer.

Which would Joe Bloe using a celular phone prefer?  The clipper chip when
he knows any spook can listen to him, or a third party IDEA chip which
is quite secure?

The IDEA cartridge could have some rotary switches with numbers on them
to set for a 128 bit key.  Sort of like the push button SCSI device ID
selectors on external cases.  Perhaps the cartridge might even have a 
touch tone like keypad for typing in a pass phrase.... etc.   This could
be done quite cheaply.  Hell, you could probably just use a 68000 a ROM
and a say 64K of RAM and not need a special IDEA chip.