Markoff article on encryption

[Anonymous <nowhere@bsu-cs.bsu.edu>]

extracted from:

 RISKS-FORUM Digest  Saturday 15 January 1994  Volume 15 : Issue 38

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Date: Fri, 14 Jan 94 9:38:33 PST
From: "Peter G. Neumann" <neumann@csl.sri.com>
Subject: "INDUSTRY DEFIES CLINTON ON DATA ENCRYPTION" -- John Markoff

[The following item is copyrighted by the 1994 N.Y. Times, and appeared on
Thursday, 13 Jan 1994.  It is reproduced in RISKS with the permission of its
author.  Any further reuse requires permission of the New York Times.  PGN]

   REDWOOD CITY, Calif.  The Clinton administration's newly articulated
information technology policy of persuasion, rather than dictation, is getting
an early test.
   At an industry conference in Redwood City this week, computer hardware,
software and telecommunications companies as well as a major bank, are saying
they intend to adopt an industry coding standard for protecting the privacy of
electronic communications, rather than support a standard being pushed by the
administration.
   Unlike the administration-backed standard, the technology, which has been
commercialized by RSA Data Security Inc., does not provide an electronic
``trapdoor'' that would enable law-enforcement agencies to eavesdrop on
digital communications.
   The administration, whose standard is known as the Clipper chip, contends
that a trapdoor is necessary to detect criminal activity or espionage because
sophisticated encryption techniques can make digital phone calls or computer
communications nearly impervious to wiretaps.
   Wednesday, Hewlett Packard Co. became the last of the leading United States
computer companies to license the RSA software, joining Apple Computer, IBM,
Sun Microsystems, Digital Equipment and Unisys.
   Several companies announced at the conference that they planned to begin
selling products that embed RSA's software. Among them are General Magic, a
software developer; National Semiconductor; a consortium of five cellular data
companies, and Bankers Trust Co.
   The conference was sponsored by RSA, which is based in Redwood City, and
attracted many of the nation's best non-government cryptographers a group of
code makers and code breakers who have generally been hostile to any form of
government restrictions on their technology.
   They have sparred for more than a decade with the National Security Agency,
the main proponent of the Clipper chip. The agency is responsible for
monitoring electronic communications worldwide for the government, in the name
of national security.
   In addition to opposition from the cryptographers, the government's Clipper
chip proposal has already stirred bitter opposition from civil liberties
organizations and computer user groups, who fear the Clipper chip would make
electronic communications too easy for anyone to eavesdrop.
   Now the industry's rush to embrace an encryption standard that does not
provide a way for the government to listen to data or voice conversations is
certain to put new pressure on the Clinton administration, which is now in the
final stages of a classified review of its Clipper standard.
   ``It's clear that what is going on here today is contrary to the way the
NSA wants the world to move,'' said Lynn McNulty, associate director for
computer security at the National Institute for Standards and Technology, a
Commerce Department agency. The institute proposed the Clipper standard last
April, although most of its technical development was done by NSA researchers.
   Despite their defiance, researchers attending the conference worried that
the government might still have the means to enforce its vision of a coding
standard.
   ``They have the trump card that we don't have,'' said Bruce Schneier, a
former government cryptography researcher, who is the author of a textbook
titled ``Applied Cryptography.'' ``They could make it a law that it's
mandatory to use their standard.''

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