President Clinton’s plan to promote the US National Institute of Standards & Technology-developed Clipper Chip as a way to protect cellular telephone conversations from eavesdropping (CI No 2,151) is causing concern among some users, who are worried about who will keep the key. The nasty thing about strong encryption from the administration’s point of view is that it prevents the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and other government agencies going about their legal phone-tapping business. To overcome this, the White House is proposing a database that would store the encryption keys for each Clipper-equipped device. The security envisaged for protecting this information is substantial. Each Clipper Chip will have two separate keys, both of which are needed to crack the transmissions, and will be held in separate escrow databases, by different agencies – but the question is, who exactly will these agencies be? The administration hasn’t made up its mind yet, saying only that they will be two independent entities; those that have been briefed say that they will not be the National Security Agency or the law enforcement agencies. Names that are flying around at the moment are the US General Accounting Office, the Stanford Research Institute or one of the US National Laboratories such as the Los Alamos Lab. The Clipper Chips will be fabricated by Mykotronx Inc, in Torrance, and VLSI Technology Inc, in San Jose, California.
Skipjack
The encryption algorithm, nicknamed Skipjack, is intended to remain confidential, but is said to work on 64-bit blocks, like the DES algorithm, but with 32 rounds of scrambling as compared to DES’s 16. How long it will remain confidential is a matter for debate, but the US government intends to control the technology’s export strictly, issuing licences only on a case-by-case basis and then only to US companies seeking to use these devices to secure their own communications abroad. So much for global roaming…
