Hacker Chronicles 2/HACKER2.BIN/1114.SECRET.OPN

Text File | 1994-03-07 | 7KB | 141 lines

This letter voices concerns about a threat to the rights of
privacy for all citizens.  Information has been collected and
edited from several sources, including EFF.

On Friday, February 4, 1994, the Clinton Administration announced
that it plans to proceed on every front to make the Clipper Chip
encryption scheme a national standard, and to discourage the
development and sale of alternative powerful encryption
technologies.  If the government succeeds in this effort, the
resulting blow to individual freedom and privacy could be
immeasurable.

Here are some news reports regarding our right to privacy on the
telephone, your private computer, LAN networks, cable, or ANY
electronic communication product or service.

From the L.A. Times, Business Section, Friday, January 28, 1994:
"Controlling the Superhighway"

     "Telecommunications: Administration presents plan to
     preempt local authority to ensure that all players are
     treated alike.

     "...The Administration's proposal, outlined at a
     Thursday morning briefing at the Commerce Department,
     would extend exclusive federal jurisdiction over
     companies that offer both cable and telephone services
     or other two-way, broad-band digital communications
     services.

     "Currently, telephone companies are regulated as so-
     called common carriers by both state and federal
     regulators.  By contrast, cable TV operators have no
     obligation under federal or state law to provide
     unfettered access to anyone with the means to pay."

Even more chilling than the federal power grab of local telcos
and cable, is the restriction of strong cryptography.

Public-key cryptography allows people who have never met or
exchanged secret keys, to broadcast encryption keys openly, yet
communicate with security.  Messages signed with a secret key can
be verified by anyone with the available matching public key.
Public-key gives users both the safety and convenience of
electronic files plus the security features of paper envelopes
and signatures.  Public-key crypto, in other words, makes paper
obsolete.  Companies like Lotus, Apple, Novell, Microsoft, and
many other telecom hard/software vendors were starting to include
these functions in their products.

So why should we care?

From the L.A. Times, Sunday, October 3, 1993, Front Page, Column
One: "Demanding the Ability to Snoop"

     "Afraid new technology may foil eavesdropping efforts,
     U.S. officials want phone and computer users to adopt
     the same privacy code.  The government would hold the
     only key."

The article covers the controversy over the Clipper/Skip-
jack/Capstone "SpookTap" chip, a government "privacy" proposal
that would give your secret keys to the NIST (an NSA-influenced
update of the old National Bureau of Standards) and the Treasury
Department (in charge of the ATF and the IRS).  At the time of
the above article, it was only a proposal.  Now...

From the L.A. Times, Saturday, February 5, 1994, by reporters at
THE WASHINGTON POST, p. A27: "FBI, NSA Win Fight for High-Tech
Eavesdropping"

     "WASHINGTON - The Clinton Administration on Friday
     rejected the arguments of the computer industry and
     civil libertarians and sided with national security
     agencies that sought to guarantee their ability to
     intercept and decode messages sent over computer and
     telephone lines."

Export controls will be maintained, and new government wiretap
powers will be supported, per the following paragraph in the same
article:

     "Further, government officials said, the Administration
     is expected in a few weeks to endorse an FBI proposal
     that U.S. telecommunications firms be required to
     guarantee that law enforcement agencies will have the
     ability to tap phone and computer lines regardless of
     where the technology goes."

This seems to go even beyond federal key escrow, to the point of
giving every Sheriff with a personal computer access to your
private conversations, without you knowing they are listening.
And this availability will NOT require waiting for a court order,
but will be available at all times to "authorized" law
enforcement agents.

The export of cryptography is restricted (although it is
available from competitors outside our borders) under regulations
that treat it as a "defense article" under the Munitions Export
Control Act.  Over a billion dollars worth of foreign trade is
lost.  The environment is bearing the weight of physical paper
delivery and commute costs, when businesses could distribute
catalogs, take orders, pay with digital cash, and enforce
contracts in court with provable signatures WITHOUT paper or
transportation!  Privacy features from Lotus, Apple, Novell,
Microsoft and other developers, are called "Information Weapons."
Too bad the 2nd Amendment isn't valid anymore.

The lack of widespread commercial encryption products means that
it will be very easy for the federal government to set its own
standard - the Clipper Chip standard. As you may know, the
government's Clipper Chip initiative is designed to set an
encryption standard where the government holds the keys to our
private conversations. Together with the Digital Telephony bill,
which is aimed at making our telephone and computer networks
"wiretap-friendly," the Clipper Chip marks a dramatic new effort
on the part of the government to prevent us from being able to
engage in truly private conversations.

There is a way to fight those initiatives, and that's to make
sure that powerful alternative encryption technologies can be
placed in the hands of any citizen who wants to use them. The
government hopes that, by pushing the Clipper Chip in every way
short of explicitly banning alternative technologies, it can
limit your choices for secure communications.

Again, why should we care?

Because the government restricts encryption by classifying it as
munitions-related, I understand Phil Zimmerman (a software
developer) was told to obtain a munitions license to sell his PGP
encryption software.  PGP, standing for Pretty Good Privacy, is a
world wide supported personal encryption program that scares he**
out of the NSA, because its works, TOO WELL!

It is the right of any individual to have privacy, no one has the
right to be able to snoop on your privacy.  As such, the
government's demands that the only encryption that may be used on
public airwaves is with their "approved" algorithm (the DES
fiasco, Clipper, et al.) is bogus.