Someone please wake me from this nightmare.
OK, I'll try to be pragmatic and cut the fiery rhetoric here and avoid
choir-preaching.
This thing is out. Let's man the battlestations. Here's a nice little
summary sheet of things that we should emphasize in public on the
proposal, for the tip-of-the-tongue comments to friends, coworkers, and
your grandmother. The public stance should be as straightforward and
nontechnical as possible. We should attempt to derail the plan on as
many nontechnical points as possible, because to attack technical
points lends an aura of legitimacy to it, making it sound like `they
had good intentions, but it's not going to work.' The truth (of course)
is that this proposal is an illegitimate child, this time borne of
grotesque bedfellows (e.g. Denning, Clinton and the NSA) but a monster
no matter WHO the parents... Without further ado, the 14 Points...
1. Look how the proposal was `handed down' like a unilateral decree. It
smacks of a government making decisions for us and excluding us from
the process. The whole proposal sounds kind of sinister when viewed in
the light of its tone of ``we know what's best for you'' and ``if you
don't cooperate, we may have to roll out more nasty things.'' This
unilateral handing-down is really obnoxious, because the administration
has wholly bypassed the congress and the public at large! It has all
the noxious smell of something a dictator (or a naive president prodded
by the sheer force of a massively funded secret federal agency) would do.
2. Clearly there has been a huge amount of secret development on this
and taxpayer money funding it. Why is it that this process has been
wholly shielded from public view until now? Why is so much money being
spent on depriving Americans of their rights? Why are we spending so
much money to eavesdrop on our neighbors (esp. when they seem like such
*nice* people)? It's all so horrifyingly undemocratic and authoritarian
and impolite. Does our government have something to hide? Do they think
we are too stupid to understand the details? Or are they afraid we
would become more disgusted the more we hear?
3. AT&T has already committed, say the rumors, to building phones with
the chip. There must be some sleazy backroom collusion between
executives of this company and the government. Why were others
excluded? Is this part Clinton's vision of free enterprise? Does the
government play favorites among companies? Isn't there something
blatantly illegal about this?
4. The announcement is outright obfuscatory. It specifically excludes
any mention of the NSA when its noninvolvement is a total fantasy. In
fact, the sheet in stating that other agencies are behind it is
something of a lie in this regard. We should attack the proposal as
being absurdly vague on extremely important, *central* points (such as
which two agencies carry the keys), but that even if the
swiss-cheese-quality holes were diminished, the proposal would *still*
be unacceptable; it is fundamentally flawed, a wrong idea that has no
merit whatsoever.
5. Here is a neat analogy. Notice how Joe Policeman has to buy his cars
at any regular car dealer. We don't get excited when we hear that
hoodlums and terrorists and drug dealers can buy cars at the same
place. In other words, law enforcement agencies are not entitled to
special perks or privileges from private industry. And we don't
tolerate extreme obstructions in our ability to buy cars when we have
the money, the car is there, and we like it. And the government doesn't
restrict us from having cars that can drive faster than policecars. We
don't let the government install special boxes in our cars that can
cripple them by remote control when a cop is chasing us! (note that
analogies have to be perfect or they turn into minutae bogs)
6. More on the free enterprise issue. Why was this single company that
created the Clipper Chip favored by the government? What gives them the
right to have a monopoly? Why is the government deliberately *creating*
a monopoly? It is thumbing its nose at all those other poor
hardworking cryptography companies who worked so hard, coming up with
better schemes, and were rejected (a little melodrama for grandma there)
7. The chip was developed by `government engineers'. Who? Why is the
government in the realm of something that is the role of private
industry? What is our government doing creating `state of the art'
stuff *at*all*? And why, of all the things they could be improving, are
they coming up with a device to invade people's privacy?
8. We have to attack the ``state-of-the-art'' thing ad infinitum. Has
the government *ever* come up with something state of the art? Do we
Americans want to be state-of-the-art in the field of privacy
deprivation? How do we know it is `state-of-the-art' when we can't
*look* at it for ourselves, and only hear it from people who are
involved in the project saying `trust us, it's way cool'? Even if it
was as sophisticated as a Cray Supercomputer, are there just some
machines that shouldn't be built? Are there some devices, that, while
technically feasible, shouldn't be built?
9. One of the most important claims is that ``this chip provides no new
authority to wiretap''. We've got to focus on this one. We can say the
constitution specifically prohibits illegal search and seizure, and
that we don't really remember who it was that decided that the
government had free reign on wiretapping. We can say that it has always
been the right of the government to obtain warrents, but it has always
been the right of people to speak in codes, and now new technology is
*helping* people to exercise a right that has always existed but lay
undiscovered because of complexity.
10. In fact, we have to make it sound like new technology like
encryption and cyberspace is going to help us rediscover our rights,
and that vast government agencies that have been built up because we
simply were ignorant of these dormant rights, and are based on our lack
of exercising them, are going to gradually dissolve away, like the way
those associated with the Cold War have, because they are superfluous.
Sure, people will get displaced, and be noisy in their complaints, but
their jobs are no longer necessary or even *possible* in the 21st
century (allusions to breakup of NSA). In fact, maybe we should get a
Privacy Dividend like the much-heralded Peace Dividend when our
government agencies no longer have the capability to intercept private
communication. How about that--tell the public that we all get a
Privacy Dividend if they embrace unbreakable encryption!
11. Notice that the problem with surveillance and wiretapping is that
it has always been a catch-22---the government needs the data to prove
you are a criminal, but shouldn't have access to that data unless it
can prove you are a criminal. Notice that the proposal talks about The
solution lay in not wiretapping, of course! And now we have technology
to *enforce* this choice. And the proposal talks about `criminals and
terrorists' as if we know exactly who they are---but (as I understand
it, and last I checked!) that is the point of a court to decide.
12. The plan makes it sound like we can somehow boost technological
competitiveness (a real button-pushing hot topic among the public) by
protecting the private communications of companies etc. We have to
attack this and say that these companies only benefit if they have
control over the scheme and it is not `imposed from above' and that
when it is `imposed from above' it actually has the effect of
*weakening* their technological competiveness, because it restricts
their choices into buying something that may not be right for their
needs. We should point out that privacy is complex and the ability for
the government to foresee all needs is ridiculous, and furthermore even
if it had such a capability it would not be its proper role. We have to
really drive this one home: privacy choices (i.e. encryption) is an
issue that has to be decided by the individual. That's the American Way
(tm) -- insert at this point the National Anthem, flag waving, smiling
kid eating apple pie.
13. ``The government must develop consistent, comprehensive policies''
regarding the use of the new infrastructure of data highways. Well, yes
and no. We should talk about data highways as not like real ones in
that people can't have accidents, they are virtually impossible to
damage with mere data, they can withstand tremendous strains in
traffic, regulating mechanisms are *built in* to the software and
hardware, hence the need for government `regulations' is a bit
misguided and inapplicable. Also, the government has no business
telling you that you can only drive one kind of car, or that your car
has to be crippled so it can't go faster than 55 MPH, or that you have
to tell them where you're going every time you get in it, etc.
14. The proposal makes it sound like if the government is just shrewd
enough, they will always be able to intercept and decrypt traffic. We
have to drive home the point that no amount of ingenuity whatsoever can
plug the dike of advancing technology, and that it is not the case that
we warp or befuddle the technology to support our
government--increasingly we will be adapting our government to harness
new and powerful technology! I.e. we require a fundamental change in
our governing systems, to `access' our newfound rights that have lain
dormant for too long via novel technology, and this proposal can be
viewed as a `last gasp' of a dying system...
Finally, the bright side (really?). We can point out that this
proposal, while intrinsically flawed and nauseatingly abhorrent, is
bringing into public view important issues of cryptography, that much
more sophisticated cryptography will be discovered and widely utilized,
that it reveals the true aims of and weaknesses in our government
process that we can alter, fix, or remove, that people are starting to
realize how much wiretapping is going on and that the sensible and
patriotic goal is to not encourage but limit or abolish it (by making
it impossible), that it reveals the need for trully strong encryption
easily accessable by all the unwashed masses, that it is just a tiny
thread starting the weaving of an entirely new colorful tapestry in our
nation and our government's history (oops, here comes the blaring music
and the flapping flag and the bright-eyed kid again...)
I insert my patriotic and emotional salute to us Cypherpunks here...
p.s. we should point out that Thomas Jefferson actually came up with a
highly sophisticated cryptographic rotor code that was so secure it was
used even for a long time at the beginning of this century, and that
clearly a Founding Father has a strong commitment to strong
cryptography! (see The Codebreakers by Kahn for more info on Jefferson's code)
``If it were necessary to choose between the Government and Privacy, I
should not hesitate to prefer the latter...''
``Give me Privacy, or give me Death...''
p.s. we should point out that Thomas Jefferson actually came up with a
highly sophisticated cryptographic rotor code that was so secure it was
used even for a long time at the beginning of this century, and that
clearly a Founding Father has a strong commitment to strong cryptography!
