From: koontzd@lrcs.loral.com (David Koontz )
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 94 15:56:39 PST
To: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com
Subject: Re: CLIPPER COMPROMIZED!!!! :-)
Message-ID: <9403182355.AA07420@io.lrcs.loral.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>From: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com (bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com +1-510-484-6204)

>>> <<CLIPPER COMPROMISED?  "Security Insider Report," a monthly newsletter
>> published in Seminole, Fla., has reported that government officials are
>> seeking to determine whether former CIA employee and alleged traitor
>> Aldrich Ames may have sold information to the Russians about the
>> government's secret key-escrow technology used in Clipper Chip chipsets
>> and Capstone Tessera cards.  The secret key-escrow technology, dubbed
>> Skipjack, can be used to encrypt network voice and data.
>
>which must *obviously* be true because it came off the *wire services*...
>Probably Aldrich Ames didn't have any contact with the people in the
>NSA doing Clipper or the FBI people doing Digital Telephony Prevention.

Ames may have had access to the rationale Dot and an un-named white
house source were quoted to effect ' ..if you knew what I know, you
would understand the need' (in effect tying Clipper to national security).

Were he to compromise how good the interception is IN THIS COUNTRY to
a foreign powers intelligence service, for instance,  it might severly
change their way of doing communications in the U.S.  (the target country).

Thus, nullifying some of the effect of say, a hypothetical successor to
SHAMROCK, (Allen Steeles Big Ear).