Bobby Ray Inman wants ciphers restricted!

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

Here's another one of those apparent "trial balloons," this time from
an influential former Director of the NSA.  As DIRNSA, Admiral Inman
was the one who in the late 1970s proposed restrictions on the use of
public key cryptography, at least according to Bamford in "The Puzzle
Palace."

Inman later was in the CIA, then MCC in Austin, and is now involved in
venture capital in various ways. I believe his VC firm invested in
Cylink, one of the four partners in Public Key Partners (the others
being RSADSI, Stanford, and MIT). (Paranoids like us might look for
links to Mykotronx....)

Enough speculation for now. Here's the item:


From: howard@hal.com (Howard Gayle)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.crypto,alt.politics.libertarian,comp.org.eff.talk,alt.privacy.clipper
Subject: von Mises Inst. Free Market article on Clipper
Date: 19 Sep 1993 16:29:34 GMT
Message-ID: <27i1de$edv@hal.com>
Reply-To: howard@hal.com (Howard Gayle)
Summary: Government subsidies imply government control.
Keywords: Bobby Ray Inman, NSA, registration, EFF

The September 1993 issue of "The Free Market" has an article by
Gary McGath about Clipper.  "The Free Market" is a monthly
non-technical newsletter from the Ludwig von Mises Institute.
Gary McGath is the publisher of the "Thomas Paine Review." Here's
a quote:
   "Bobby Ray Inman, former director of the NSA, has even
   proposed `a registry of institutions which can legally use
   ciphers,' as he explained in his recent book.  `If you get
   somebody using one who isn't registered, then you go after
   him.'"

McGath also mentions the EFF:
   "The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which opposes the
   Clipper, still applauds legislation to subsidize network
   access.  But by inviting the government to build their
   `highway,' EFF is inviting in the traffic cops.

   "The only way to keep our communications free of governmental
   intrusion is to keep them free of governmental involvement."
--
Howard Gayle
HAL Computer Systems, Inc.
1315 Dell Avenue
Campbell, California 95008
USA
howard@hal.com
Phone: +1 408 379 7000 extension 1080
FAX  : +1 408 379 5022

--