What is a clipper chip?

Clipper Chip was a controversial encryption facility promoted by the US government for use in the telecommunications industry. He used small information known as keys to encrypt calls, protecting them from capturing and eavesdropping. This technology has been designed with a special "backdoor" that would enable the right to violate encryption with an order or other legal permit. The diverse group of opponents criticized the proposal of privacy and safety and the system was abandoned within a few years of its announcement.

approved by Clinton's administration in 1993 was offered as a way for individuals, businesses and government entities to protect telephone calls from eavesdropping. It consisted of a small microchip called a cryptoprocessor, which could be built into phones and encryption of voice communication using the "keys" of information that control the output of mathematical encryption algorithms. Without Corrklíč ECT, other devices or someone eavesdropping on call would only hear the ballHaný signal.

The encryption algorithm used in the Clipper Chip was designed by the National Security Agency (NSA), a high -secret arm of the American government that deals with electronic espionage and supervision. The NSA algorithm, known as a "skipjack", was similar to technologies developed in a private sector with one remarkable exception: Skipjack was designed to provide federal enforcement and anti -terrorist agents "Backdoor" that could be used to access the skewing. For each device sold, a clipper compatible by a key capable of breaking the encryption of this device would be divided in half and maintained in the government by the government, one part holding the division of the automated systems of the Ministry of Finance and the other in the hands of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Agency's jokes such as the Federal Investigation Office (FBI) could get keys and monitor encrypted calls underEzil.

6 Many critics claimed that the inclusion of backdoor was a threat to privacy and security, while others accused the government of trying to suppress private encryption technologies by purchasing tens of thousands of Clipper support while maintaining an export of advanced encryption software. Government officials faced that without such a program, terrorists and rings of organized crime would thwart the legal efforts to wiretaps to impenetrable encryption.

Until 1996, the US government left the proposal of Clipper Chip. During the three -year debate and discussion of the program, the chip was included in only one model of phones produced by AT&T. The effectiveness and safety of the proposed encryption device was questioned when the AT&T researcher has shown that a sophisticated criminal could use the system vulnerability in the system and prevent the right to capture the communication. Although Clipper Chip was abandoned himself, the debate on the relationship between encryption and enforcement of law continued.