From: Duncan Frissell <76630.3577@CompuServe.COM>
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 93 16:28:18 PDT
To: <cypherpunks@toad.com>
Subject: NPR Clipper Report Transcript
Message-ID: <930429232303_76630.3577_EHK20-1@CompuServe.COM>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Here is the NPR report on Clipper broadcast on the Tuesday following Der Tag.
It was heroically transcribed by my wife Lois and myself.  There are no
errors (except for name spellings we had to guess at) so we won't apologize 
for them.

Duncan Frissell


National Public Radio

Morning Edition -- Tuesday 20 April 1993 -- C+4 (Clipper + 4)

Approx 6:50 am EDT repeated 8:50 am EDT

(a few words missing from the front end)

...telephone communications from illegal eavesdropping.  But the new system 
is the focus of controversy because the federal government has built in 
a way for law enforcement agencies to listen to private conversations.  
NPR's Dan Charles reports:

You don't usually go to the White House to learn about computer 
technology.  But last Friday, officials there unveiled a new silicon 
chip.  The Clipper Chip, as it's called, is programmed to turn electronic 
transmissions like telephone conversations into gibberish that no one 
unauthorized listening in can understand.  And it turns that gibberish 
back into normal speech or data at the other end.  

Whitfield Diffey, a senior engineer at Sun Microsystems in Silicon Valley, 
says this Clipper Chip is an example of the technology of secret codes 
or cryptography.  

"This is in some sense a relatively ordinary cryptographic chip, of which 
there lots."

Banks, companies, and government officials can use these chips to make 
sure no one eavesdrops on financial transfers or confidential 
discussions.  And the government says this new chip will offer more 
powerful protection than anything people could buy up to now.  But 
there's another reason why the government wants people to use the Clipper 
Chip, and it's why a lot of people are up in arms about it.  Every one of 
these chips will have in its circuitry a unique key --- a very long number
--- that only the government knows.  And if an agency of the government,
like the FBI, wants to listen in, that number will be like a master key that 
allows them to decode the conversation.  

"The mechanism is very much like what the real estate agents do with 
houses.  Right, they take you to show you a house and they don't have a 
key to that house in their pockets.  But they get to the house, and
there's a lock box hanging on the front door.  And they have a master key
in their pockets, and they open the lock box, and take out the key to the
door, and open the front door, and go in and show you the house."

The special key that the government holds is like the key to the lock box.
Even though someone using the Clipper Chip can choose their own key to keep
other people from listening in, the chip is programmed to always keep that
changing key inside the lock box, where the government can get at it.  The
reason for that lock box is that the government occasionally likes to listen
in to the phone calls of suspected criminals at home and hostile governments
abroad.

For the last two years, law enforcement officials have been worrying publicly
that the Mafia or terrorists will start buying powerful scrambler phones to
keep the FBI from understanding their conversations.  The government doesn't
want to ban this technology because, increasingly, legitimate businesses
depend on it.  So the government developed its own version --- the Clipper
Chip.

Raymond Kammer, Acting Director of the National Institute of Standards and
Technology, says it's a good compromise.  "On the one hand you've got a need
for personal privacy.  And I think most of us intuitively understand that and
desire it.  I know I do.  And on the other hand, you've got the right of
society to try and assure itself that it's safe from crime.

But computer scientist Whitfield Diffey, who's one of the pioneers of modern
cryptography, thinks the lock box is a terrible idea.  He says that trying to
deny even criminals the right to a private conversation is dangerous.  It is
something absolutely essential to the functioning of society.  "We are taking 
a long step towards saying, 'No, you can never be sure that you're going to 
have a private conversation on the phone.'  And therefore, a real right of 
privacy only belongs to people rich enough to travel and meet face to face."

Government officials say they have policies in place to prevent abuse.  Law
enforcement agencies will have to request the key for any lock box from two
separate independent agencies, each of which will have only a piece of the key.
This should also make it harder for anyone to steal the keys.  Diffey says the
Clipper Chip will encourage more government eavesdropping, simply because it's
there.  "Technology makes policy," he says, "if the government invests hundreds
of millions of dollars creating a computer chip designed for wire taps, it will
try to take advantage of that investment whenever possible by carrying out
more of them.

The success of the government strategy will depend on people buying the chip.
AT&T will soon be selling a small flat box, half a foot long and about four
inches wide, with the Clipper Chip at its heart.  It costs just over $1000,
plugs right into the cord that connects the telephone handset to the phone
itself.  People who have it can talk to each other in complete privacy ---
unless the government wants to listen in.

This is Dan Charles in Washington.