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Newsgroups: sci.crypt
From: gtoal@gtoal.com (Graham Toal)
Subject: Re: text of White House announcement and Q&As on clipper chip encryption
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1993 14:03:20 +0000
Message-ID: <9304191403.AA13170@pizzabox.demon.co.uk>
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Bred wrote:
	And this means that the FBI will want to track the customer lists of
	better encryption phones, because "the only reason a person would want
	one is to evade the police."

They don't have to track customer lists - they merely have to digitally
listen to any phone line and eliminate any that don't have the clipper
header/signature.  (No-one has said how it will be modulated - want a bet
it's a non-standard and hence easily recognisable baudrate?)

Devices to scan exchanges and detect modems etc already exist.  I've seen
them advertised in the trade press.

Once you eliminate crippled crypto devices and ordinary data modems, what's
left is crypto worth looking more closely at.  I guess any substitute scheme
will have to be v32bis or v.fast to disguise it, though then they just start
looking at the data too...

Whatever happens though, the effect of this new chip will be to make private
crypto stand out like a sore thumb.

G
