From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 1996 20:29:25 -0800 (PST)
To: apteryx@super.zippo.com
Subject: Re: A New Crypto Announcement--Could be Ominous
In-Reply-To: <v03007803aeb2869761df@[207.167.93.63]>
Message-ID: <328E7C44.C55@gte.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Mark Heaney wrote:
> >It sounds ominous to me. Another backroom deal, probably for some form of
> >key recovery strategy, aka GAK.

> It sure looks like it, the following quotes from CNN's web page:
> http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9611/15/encryption.reut/index.html
> make it pretty clear that US government-approved export of strong
> cryptography is part of the announcement. What else could it be except gak?
> "If the encryption technology has won the backing of industry and the
> U.S. and other governments -- which Hewlett-Packard officials say is
> the case -- the development could eliminate a key obstacle to the
> growth of electronic commerce via the Internet. "
> "The technology will make it possible to export products containing
> so-called "strong encryption," which have not been exportable under
> national security laws dating back to the Cold War. "

Just a thought:  You remember that Uncle Dave (Packard, now deceased) was
the assistant Sec. of Defense, etc.  Don't think for a minute Lew Platt
and his boys don't have this one in the bag.

I once asked a couple of their PR engineers (they used to have those) if
HP would ever release (for example) the internals of their 1MB1 Capricorn
chip, which ran at 0.6 mhz (that's 640 khz!), and their answer as best I
remember was words and gestures to the effect of "no f______ way".

HP knows what's breakable and what's not, unlike you and me, and you just
know they're not going to put anything *really* important out there where
Bill and Hillary can get their paws on it.  Seems to me it's a matter of
who are you gonna line up with when the shit comes down, so to speak.