From: Anonymous <anon@anon.efga.org>
Date: Thu, 22 Jan 1998 05:58:15 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Two Turntables and a Clipper Chip
Message-ID: <dbd1e6f4a03c21b258450750255cbd6e@anon.efga.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




              Two turntables and a
              Clipper chip 
              By Skinny DuBaud 
              January 15, 1998 

              SAN FRANCISCO--In what certainly was
              not a hacker's delight, RSA Data
              Security CEO Jim Bidzos stunned the
              crowd at his company's annual
              conference this week as he joined
              old-school rappers The Sugar Hill Gang
              for a detourned version of da Gang's
              classic, "Rapper's Delight." 

              Well aware that he's no Kool Moe Dee,
              Bidzos hip-hopped his way through the
              modified lyrics, which contained such
              sparkling couplets as... "They once
              proposed a thing called Clipper
              Now there's something new that ain't
              much hipper
              Key recovery won't work, so the experts
              say
              But the government wants to push it on
              us anyway"

              and 

              "I like hip hip hop 
              I like to online shop
              I trust RSA
              To keep the hackers at bay"
              ...then promised never to pull such a
              stunt again. The RSA conference
                                  audience of
                                  crypto-math
                                  geeks,
                                  cyberlibertarians,
                                  and snoop-dogs
                                  cheered, of
                                  course. They'd
                                  throw their
                                  hands in the air
                                  (and wave them
                                  like they just
                                  don't care) for a
              wet sponge if it smelled
              antiauthoritarian, but many breathed a
              sigh of relief. 

              Despite the awkward moments, Bidzos,
              who's made quite a name for himself as
              a public enemy of the federal
              government's restrictions on the export
              of encryption software, looked
              mahvelous sporting a fresh Van Dyke
              facial-hair arrangement on his
              prizefighter's mug. He apparently grew
              the ensemble to match the Sugar Hill
              Gang--in appearance at least, if not in
              dope MC talent. Always the suave host,
              Jim will be back among his tribe at the
              end-of-conference gala, for which the
              company has rented out the California
              Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate
              Park. 

              The Skintelligentsia certainly will be
              there looking out for any
              representatives of Pretty Good Privacy,
              the crypto company enmeshed in legal
              battles with RSA. The PGP-brains don't
              have a booth at the RSA conference this
              year, but in celebration of their merger
              with Network Associates--the newly
              formed utility software company, that
              is, not the PR agency--they managed to
              throw a soiree last night at the
              Marky-Mark Hopkins Hotel, right
              across the street from the RSA
              proceedings at the equally fly Fairmont.

              Speaking of snubs, crypto rivals
              VeriSign and GTE, whose booths at the
              Fairmont were practically alongside one
              another, have been playing a bit of
              one-upmanship recently. Certificate
              authority (CA) VeriSign uses hardware
              storage from BBN to safeguard software
              encryption keys at its Silicon Valley
              offices. The hardware--which looks like
              small blue boxes about the size of a
              desktop telephone set--is the crypto
              equivalent of a strong box, ostensibly
              impervious to hackers. But BBN was
              recently bought by GTE, which owns
              rival CA Cybertrust Solutions, and all of
              a sudden, VeriSign isn't satisfied with
              the "performance" of those little blue
              boxes. The company has started looking
              elsewhere for its strong-box solutions,
              according to a Skinside source. How
              will users of encryption trust the
              "trusted third parties" if the trusted
              third parties don't trust each other? 

              Staying in Baghdad by the Bay, the
              conspiracy birds are clacking their
              beaks over the latest public
              transportation developments. S.F.'s
              Municipal Railway (or "Muni," as the
              local posse calls it) has just opened an
              extension from the end of Market
              Street down to Willie Mays Plaza, now
              just a gaping pit where the new
              baseball stadium will spring up by the
              year 2000. The shorthand for the new
              rail spur? "MMX," short for Muni Metro
              Extension. Sure, the project's gone over
              budget, but I swear it fixed that
              floating-point problem years ago... 

              Speaking of Big Willie Style, San Fran's
              mayor Willie Brown--who looks great in
              a fedora, I must say--may be second
              only to Bill Gates when it comes to
              haughty treatment of minions, but do
              Willie's employees sit on Thai temples
              and proclaim their divinity? That's
              apparently what happened to a
              Microsoft programmer on vacation.
              According to email making the rounds
              among MSN and WebTV employees, the
              young fellow (who didn't answer his
              Redmond phone when my agents rang
              him up) overheated his circuits,
              perched himself atop an ancient Thai
              temple for 10 hours, and told the
              authorities he was God. It took
              scaffolding and a special police
              neck-hold to bring him down, according
              to the report. Brutal, Juice, brutal! 

              Whether the item is true or not, it
              produced some amusing comments as
              it made its way through the outer
              provinces of Lawrence Lessig's favorite
              evil empire. 

              "So, um, how closely are we supposed
              to try to blend into the Microsoft
              culture?" mused one WebTV employee
              as the tidbit made its way around the
              company. 

              "I'm sure that each of us, at one time or
              another, has had the experience of
              waking up in some God-forsaken
              tropical paradise and feeling that
              horrible falling sensation that comes
              from being separated from your desk
              and workstation," wrote another
              Webhead.