6 ms·
Does anyone here remember the clipper chip? If you don't, I'd recommend boning up on this chapter of the crypto wars. The 'because terrorism' excuse falls a bi
by 1001101 9y ago
Does anyone here remember the clipper chip? If you don't, I'd recommend boning up on this chapter of the crypto wars.
The 'because terrorism' excuse falls a bit flat with me.
Thought experiment: how hard would it be for a terrorist organization with access to 100's of millions of dollars (eg. ISIS) to come up with a secure communications scheme? One time pad. A reasonable cipher that hasn't had any 'help' during development. Even run an encrypted channel over a backdoored product. I'm sure many of us could come up with something in a day (with decryption over an airgap). How about a hostile government with multi-billion dollar budgets (and who have been using OTP already for decades).
Is this about terrorists, or is this about citizens? My bet is on the latter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars
- sitkack 9y agoThe Clintons and Al Gore have their paws all over the Clipper Chip.
- acdha 9y agoIt's a grave mistake to demonize a single politician you dislike: if it were that simple, they'd have dropped it as soon as that one person left office. In reality, there's a large community pushing for things which they perceive as making their job easier and that persists across administrations — that started well before Clinton ran for office and certainly didn't end after he left.
- sitkack 9y agoYou are putting words in my mouth. I demonize no one. My feelings about them (The Clintons) have indeed declined over the years. I mostly have huge respect for Al Gore. But my personal feelings have absolutely nothing do to with their material involvement with the Clipper Chip. Nor do I care when it started. They all carried the baton of government key escrow which is not something I am going to forget. It is a grave mistake to not hold people accountable for their actions, to not take a stand while the bureaucracy pushes you along with the current.
- acdha 9y ago“paws” isn't a neutral term – it has strong negative connotations. My point was simply that while, yes, Bill Clinton ultimately owns his official actions, it's naive to ignore the massive weight of the entire U.S. intelligence apparatus, especially coming off of the Cold War footing, on a subject where he was hearing from a lot of experts in government and business saying this was a good move.
- libeclipse 9y agoIf you disagree with someone, the right thing to do is to put forward your own side of the argument. It isn't polite to simply disregard what someone says because of your conceptions about where that belief is coming from.
- acdha 9y agoIs it polite to pompously lecture someone about making an argument while ignoring the one they made?
- libeclipse 9y agoRather that than attack the straw man.
- rietta 9y agoI was too young at the time to understand it then, but based on history its a good thing that the ill-planned scheme did not become law.