[Cryptography] NSA voting on TLS encryption at the IETF TLS WG

[Andrew Lee]

Dear Paul,

For brevity, I removed some of the text and only left the blocks I am responding thereto: 

> On Jul 8, 2026, at 5:23 AM, Paul Wouters <paul at nohats.ca> wrote:
> 
> On Jul 7, 2026, at 23:33, Andrew Lee <andrew at joseon.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Dear Paul,
>> 
>>> On Jul 7, 2026, at 8:02 PM, Paul Wouters <paul at nohats.ca> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Thu, 2 Jul 2026, Andrew Lee wrote:
>>> 
>>>> The Clipper chip failed because the very people that are right here, and others, fought it.
>>>> 
>>>> It was a great win for the Cypherpunks.
>>> 
>>> I agree it was. We did a great job.
>>> 
>> 
>> This message seems to imply you were directly involved in fighting Clipper chip. Were you?
> 
> I was too young for that, the “we” was the Cypherpunks.
> 

Thanks for clarifying, because it was written in an obscure way where many readers may have thought otherwise.

>> 
>>> I don’t think this is an accurate description of the record. I shared information about the IETF process to this cryptography related mailing list with a brief description of the events that have occurred. I did not tell anyone how to vote.
> 
> You shared badly misinformed information about the IETF and how it works. And you keep doing it, not understanding how IETF works, when there are multiple Last Calls to resolve disagreements and instead attribute it to malice.
> 
>> 
>>> I think the phrase I’ve been pulling from the IAB’s message is that you “did not accurately describe the record,” Paul.
> 
> You didn’t provide a link to the entire message:
> 
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/iab/appeals/artifact/310
> 
> Let me quote from it:
> 
> “First, the IAB notes that the responsible AD's initial characterization of the adoption call did not accurately describe the record, and that a more precise account was provided subsequently.“
> 

I quoted the text, word for word. To be clear, what you pasted absolutely matches my understanding of it, wherein a record was not described accurately, and therefore, it was subsequently corrected.

>>> Paul Wouters (paul at cypherpunks.ca and also the IETF Security Area
>>> Director for the first two years of this document's drama lifecycle)
>>> 
>> 
>> This is certainly a cool e-mail address, but I’m confused why you are pasting that e-mail here. Is this some kind of show and tell?
> 
> Yes, it was to show you that for the last 30 years, people consider me a “Cypherpunk” (for as much as there is a definition of one) for my years of work on IPsec and DNSSEC to attempt to encrypt the entire internet and fighting NSA wiretapping. I am also known for leaking the ETSI tapping spec Transport of Internet IP Traffic (TIIT) to the public in the late 90s and my coverage of the Dutch digital tapping room that was run by a foreign government and blowing the whistle on how the Dutch branch organization of ISPs in the early 200x tried to setup a lease construction of tapping equipment to offload costs and make tapping easier.
> 

Please keep up the good work regarding your activities as a Cypherpunk. That said, I think that when one attempts to consider if cypherpunks and PhDs are voicing concern in bad faith versus the NSA, the cypherpunks and PhDs should be getting the benefit of the doubt, no?

> But sure, keep accusing me of being an NSA shill.
> 

I don’t think you’re actually telling me to accuse you of being an NSA shill, but at the same time, since I have never accused you of being an NSA shill, it’s not clear how to interpret this.

Cheers,
Andrew
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