In Tuesday June 8 Final edition of the Washington Post, Page A12
US Data Decoding Plan Delayed
Business and Legal Objections Reviewed
by John Schwartz
The Federal initiative to establish a new standard for scrambling electronic
communications will be slowed until its ramifications can be more fully
studied, the official in charge of implementing the program said yesterday.
The government's proposed "Clipper Chip" plan, announced on April 16, would
create a new national standard for data encryption that would make possible
the deccoding and wiretaps by law enforcement and national security
agencies.
The plan has met with criticism from high-technology industries that argue
that the new requirements ould be expensive and hurt the competiveness of
their products. Civil liberties advocates see it as a threat to privacy.
Raymond Kammer, acting director of the National Institite of Standards and
Technology (NIST) - which developed the Clipper proposal with the National
Security Agency and is charged with implementing it within the government-
delivered the news to a Washington conference attended largly by critics of
the Clipper plan.
In an interview afterward, Kammer said that the entiore Clipper plan was
still being discussed, and if the review revialed unresolvable problems,
"maybe we won't continue in the direction we started out."
Criticism was sharp at the cryptography and privacy conference sponsored by
the Washington office of the Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility, a public interest group concerned with high-tech issues.
One panelist compared Kammer's appearance at the conference to "having a
target painted on your chest." Kammer said: "We're not going to close off
the process while there's still productive conversation. And its' obvious
from the meeting today that ther's still plenty of productive conversation."
Pressure has been building on NIST since the WShite House announcement in
April. Critics of the plan have flooded the administration with lengthly
lists of questions about the new plan, voicing concerns that the proposal
might make American products more expensicve, less secure, and less
competitive overseas while not hindering criminals.
Last Friday, NIST's advirosy panel on privacy issues concluded two days of
heated hearings concerning the Clipper proposal with a resolution expressing
"serious concerns" sparked by the administrations's proposal. "Things are
going too fast." said William Ware, chairman of the Computer System Security
and Privacy Advisory Board, a body created under the Computer Security Act
of 1987. The NIST panel reported that the government had not conviningly
explained the nature of law enforcement problems that would be solved by the
Clipper plan, and cited damage the proposal was likely to do to the American
software industry.
Later that day, White House officials overseeing the Clipper plan met with
representatives of industry and civil liberties groups, including the
high-tech policy group Electronic Frontier Foundation as well as the
American Civil Liberties Union. Administration officials said that the
Clipper review would be extended into the fall and that the government would
not move beyond its initial plans to buy about 10,000 Clipper-equiped
telephones until the review was completed.
John Podesta, assistance to the President, said that meeting was part of a
continuing dialog with the private sector. "It's time to start ot get
answers insteead of the endless quest for questions, Podesta said."
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Any typos were added in transcription.
Pat Farrell Grad Student pfarrell@cs.gmu.edu
Department of Computer Science George Mason University, Fairfax, VA
Public key availble via finger #include