From: Jeff Davis <eagle@armory.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 08:12:21 +0800
To: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>
Subject: Re: Denning's misleading statements
In-Reply-To: <ad2ff0ab010210043115@[205.199.118.202]>
Message-ID: <9601281916.aa01048@deepthought.armory.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


> Tim May wrote:
> 
> I've never met Dorothy Denning, so I hesitate to characterize her as a
> villainess. But certainly she's the only noted cryptographer I know of
> who's gone so far out on a limb to defend a position the vast majority of
> computer scientists, civil libertarians, and cryptographers scoff at. (And
> I don't just mean it is we libertarians and civil libertarians who are
> scoffing, I mean that nearly every noted expert who has carefully reviewed
> the various schemes to control crypto and to provide GAK has found them to
> be essentially unenforceable except via draconian police state methods, and
> maybe not even then.)
> 
> I personally believe her estrangement from the mainstream position these
> last several years and her apparent close association with the
> inside-the-Beltway crowd has actually skewed her judgment, that she is no
> longer evaluating policies and capabilities based on reasonable objective,
> academic analysis.

Having met Dr. Denning, and watched her presentation of the Escrowed
Encryption Standard, (for the novice), I can concur with your analysis.
She presented  a very limited, safe, simple clipper chip, which  would do
nothing more than give the FBI an analogous wire tap to gather information 
on terrorists, pedophiles, and organized criminals such as drug dealers.

The limitations of her argument were quickly ripped to shreds by Phil
Zimmerman, who painted a much more expansive world view canvas for the
audience.  Denning was visibly shaking as we talked after the session.
The NSA group think she was armed with didn't provide her the tools to
deal with the reality she found herself in.

> Her views, and even many of her examples, are very close the views and
> examples used by FBI Director Louis Freeh in his testimony to Congress a
> few years ago. (I scanned and OCRed this testimony as a favor to Whit
> Diffie, so in reviewing the text for OCR corrections, I became very
> familiar with Freeh's fear-inducing testimony.)

Your participation in the A&E Voyager segment presented much food for thought.
We are becoming the "Bad Guys" in a well orchestrated Psy Ops campaign
propagated naively by the 4th Estate.  Robust cryptography and online
anonymity are portrayed as the tools of various "Boogie Men" the US Gov't
is obliged to protect  its unsuspecting civilians from.

Its up to us to find them specifically lying and cheating, and expose that
information to public scrutiny.  30 years ago the 4th Estate had a field
day hyping the LSD Chromosome Break *Hoax*.  Van Sim, of the Edgewood Arsenal
was unable to replicate the research, but his findings were suppressed by the
US Army by virtue of a long standing liaison between the CIA and the 
research and development staff at Edgewood.

Denning announced the  Clipper scheme secure, and Blaze hacked it shortly
there after.  She parrots the NSA party line, and there is a well established
link of conflict of interest negating any academic objectivity she might
profess.  Those of you who've come in personal contact with NSA cryptographers
can attest to their collective arrogance.  They consider themselves an
exclusive elite, above trivial civil liberties issues.  
-- 
According to John Perry Barlow:                       *What is EFF?* 
"Jeff Davis is a truly gifted trouble-maker." *email <info@eff.org>*
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