[6615] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Interesting point about the declassified Capstone spec
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Arnold G. Reinhold)
Fri Feb 11 16:59:33 2000
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Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2000 16:46:04 -0500
To: daw@cs.berkeley.edu (David Wagner), cryptography@c2.net
From: "Arnold G. Reinhold" <reinhold@world.std.com>
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At 12:38 PM -0800 2/11/2000, David Wagner wrote:
>In article <v04210102b4ca1b7a641f@[24.218.56.92]>,
>Arnold G. Reinhold <reinhold@world.std.com> wrote:
>> Clipper/Capstone was always advertised to the public as providing a
>> higher level (80-bits) of security than DES while allowing access by
> > law enforcement agencies.
>
>Law enforcement friendly is very different from SIGINT friendly.
I agree completely. That is why I copied the Capstone abstract
verbatim. Peter Gutmann had written:
>it's described in the abstract as "a SIGINT friendly replacement for DES"
What the abstract actually says is: "CAPSTONE started as an
embodiment of a Law Enforcement SIGINT friendly replacement for the
Data Encryption Standard (DES)."
"SIGINT friendly" might suggest an NSA back door. "Law Enforcement
SIGINT friendly" doesn't imply anything more than what was originally
advertised. I assume Peter was just careless in his quoting, but it
is an important distinction.
Arnold Reinhold
