[Cryptography] Anti-clipper team re-assembles

[Salz, Rich]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/08/technology/code-specialists-oppose-us-and-british-government-access-to-encrypted-communication.html:
				
"On Tuesday, the group — 13 of the world’s pre-eminent cryptographers, computer scientists and security specialists — will release the paper, which concludes there is no viable technical solution that would allow the American and British governments to gain “exceptional access” to encrypted communications without putting the world’s most confidential data and critical infrastructure, in danger.
...
"Back then, the group analyzed the technical risks and practical shortcomings of a proposal in the Clinton administration called the Clipper chip. Clipper would have poked a hole in cryptographic systems by requiring technology manufacturers to include a small hardware chip in their products that would have ensured the government would always be able to unlock scrambled communications."

The report (30 pages)  is at http://www.crypto.com/papers/Keys_Under_Doormats_FINAL.pdf  In two sentences:  you tried to do this 20 years ago, we showed how it would not work; it would be even worse if you tried to do it now.