From: ""L. Detweiler"" <ld231782@longs.lance.colostate.edu>
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 93 16:49:22 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Newsweek Clipper Coverage
Message-ID: <9306020026.AA27360@longs.lance.colostate.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Under `Society -- Technology' in Newsweek of June 7 1993 p.70 appears
the headline `The Code of the Future' subhead `Uncle Sam wants you to
use ciphers it can crack'. This 1 page article is pretty ambitious for
what it tries to cover. The figure shows a flowchart for encryption
over a phone using a key. (Not particularly illuminating. In particular
the role & point of the key is ambiguous.) At the bottom 1/4 page we
have a sidebar ``Great Moments in Cryptography' with 1st known
encryption (Egyptian), the Zimmerman Telegram role in WWI, the Japanese
Purple breakthrough prior to Pearl Harbor (the picture is apparently
Friedman holding the machine), and finally Nov 4 1952 (a day that will
live in infamy), Truman creates the NSA, `master of math based codes'.

The article notes in the lead-in a cute & useful `hook' for the public
& popular role  of cryptography I have been drawing for a long time for
nontechnical friends, saying that with it Queen Elizabeth could have
been spared the spectacle of the steamy Prince Charles phone
revelations and eavesdroppers would have heard nothing but a hiss, and
`no signal analyzer, no supercomputer, no wiretap could have decoded
the white noise.' Fortunately, they attribute this `reputation saving
magic' not to Clipper but a DES chip.  ``That's what America's
supersecret spymasters, the NSA, intended when they designed the
cryptographic system in the 70s with IBM.'' (glaring errata; their
involvement has always been officially claimed as *secondary* and
*subsidiary* to IBM's, if even at all. But, it is an error in our favor.)

Article doesn't mention Clipper by name, but says it was essentially a
response to the unbreakable aspects of DES using key system.  Eric
Hughes, `computer security expert [at] Berkeley': ``The government is
saying, `If you want to lock something up, you have to [give us] the key'.''

Next, the motivation. Our networks are insecure, Internet ``broken into
90 percent more times than 1991'' (where'd that little statistic come
from? Gene Spafford?). Security of medical records, credit-card
purchases, video rentals, cellular phones at stake.  NSA chip used by
AT&T would take a supercomputer over a billlion years to solve, says R.
Kammer of NIST.

Problems: NSA hasn't revealed the algorithm so nobody knows if its
`hackproof'; agencies holding keys are vulnerable to `recreational
hackers, foreign spooks, and industrial spies.'

Here comes the gut-wrencher.  ``For now now one is forced to use the
NSA chip. But manufacturers who put a rival chip into, say, their
modems would likely be denied government contracts, as well as export
licenses for the NSA-proof products.  Even that may not appease the
spymasters.  ***No one rules out a mandatory encryption standard,''
says NIST spokesman Mat Heyman.***''

Is that quote from the point of view `our concerns on this have not
been allayed' or in the vein `all the NSA henchmen I know are chomping
at the bit to legislate a monopoly or outlaw non-Clipper chips'?

Overall, I'd say a favorable article that covers the basics, and rather
excellent editing given the severe space limitation (less than many
newspaper articles). Written by Sharon Begley with Melinda Liu in
Washington and Joshua Cooper Ramo.

* * *

Cypherpunks, I'm extremely concerned about these little quotes popping
up in the media. Just a few days ago we hear in the Washington Post:

>	Administration sources said that if the current plan doesn't
>enable the NSA and FBI to keep on top of the technology, then Clinton
>is prepared to introduce legislation to require use of its encryption
 >technology, which is crackable by the NSA, and to ban use of the
>uncrackable gear.
>	"It's an option on the table," said a White House official.

I sure hope that `official' has absolutely nothing to do with Clipper,
but that's unlikely.  It seems to me these are the sounds of a slow,
sinister rumbling underway.  Sometimes quotes like these are `floated
trial balloons' but other times they are grotesque flickers of real
internal machinations.  The more I hear them the more I think they are
in the latter category.

So far, the administration and media just don't `get it' that a
firestorm is in the making over any hair-thin deviation from the
standard of `no domestic regulation of encryption'.  If NSA & the
administration thinks that the Clipper brouhaha was containable, just
wait until they go a nanometer past it in the wrong direction.
Actually, a Supreme Court case on cryptography issues seems in some
ways to be inevitable.  Wow, I'd say there'd probably be enough
artillery to seriously damage NSA in that confrontation.

Cypherpunks, I'd like to compile a list of all quotations on the
`regulation of domestic cryptography' topic. That way we'll have a
propaganda poster all ready if any idiot bureacrat thinks they can
thumb their nose any further.  I have the original announcement text
and the Washington Post text above. It seems to me that an NIST
representative claimed there were `no plans' to outlaw other
cryptography. Where was that? Can everyone send me whatever they have on this topic?

P.S. Many tx. to E.H. for the thorough and excellent collection in
soda.berkeley.edu:/pub/cypherpunks/clipper.

- - -

For reference, here are the original Orwellian weasel words form the
April 16 announcement:

Q:   If the Administration were unable to find a technological
     solution like the one proposed, would the Administration be
     willing to use legal remedies to restrict access to more
     powerful encryption devices?

A:   This is a fundamental policy question which will be
     considered during the broad policy review.  The key escrow
     mechanism will provide Americans with an encryption product
     that is more secure, more convenient, and less expensive
     than others readily available today, but it is just one
     piece of what must be the comprehensive approach to
     encryption technology, which the Administration is
     developing.

     The Administration is not saying, "since encryption
     threatens the public safety and effective law enforcement,
     we will prohibit it outright" (as some countries have
     effectively done); nor is the U.S. saying that "every
     American, as a matter of right, is entitled to an
     unbreakable commercial encryption product."  There is a
     false "tension" created in the assessment that this issue is
     an "either-or" proposition.  Rather, both concerns can be,
     and in fact are, harmoniously balanced through a reasoned,
     balanced approach such as is proposed with the "Clipper
     Chip" and similar encryption techniques.