Interesting People mailing list archives
"foreign press is *torching* U.S. snoop-n-peep project"
From: David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 08:55:17 -0500
from a friend [Just received this from an associate in Switzerland who is well-known to many in the computer racket. --jim] ... I've been meaning to ask you just how much play the Clipper issue has gotten in the U.S. popular press. I'm really surprised at how much coverage you see here, in press that's the equivalent of Time/Newsweek/big city newspapers, and universally negative. Basically, as seen in the Swiss and French press, the US is using its big stick muscle to ram a technology down the throats of people worldwide so that NSA can snoop on them. This is particularly an issue in the case of GSM (global cellular phones), where the US has pretty much won the battle to make Europe weaken its original super-tough voice encryption, threatening to deny access to the internal U.S. market if they do (and then they pull a switcheroo, after GSM is weakened, by not adopting it but going for Clipper instead). The sense I got in the U.S. was that Clipper was still pretty much only an issue in the technologically knowledeable subcommunity, so I'd be interested to hear if it's now getting broader visibility. [unauthorized copy, thus anonymous, here]
Current thread:
- "foreign press is *torching* U.S. snoop-n-peep project" David Farber (Feb 16)