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.