Another Brick in the Wall (fwd)

[Mike Godwin <mnemonic@eff.org>]

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From farber Wed Feb 23 01:07:32 1994
Posted-Date: Tue, 22 Feb 1994 23:51:07 -0500
Message-Id: <199402230451.XAA28396@linc.cis.upenn.edu>
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Date: Tue, 22 Feb 1994 23:51:13 -0500
From: farber@central.cis.upenn.edu (David Farber)
Subject: Another Brick in the Wall
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To: interesting-people (interesting-people mailing list)


CyberWire Dispatch//Copyright (c) 1994

Jacking in from Another Brick in the Wall Port:

Washington, DC -- The White House is being heavily lobbied by law
enforcement agencies and national intelligence agencies to make the use of
the government designed Clipper Chip mandatory in telephones, fax machines
and cable systems, according to classified documents obtained by Dispatch.

When the Administration announced on February 4th that it was endorsing
the controversial Clipper Chip program, it asserted that any use of the
chip would be voluntary.  But the White House carefully hedged its bet:
Buried deep in the background briefing papers that accompanied the
announcement was the Administration's official policy that U.S. citizens
weren't guaranteed any constitutional right to choose their own encryption
technologies.

Government officials have brushed aside concerns from civil liberties
groups and privacy advocates that sporadic adoption of Clipper would
eventually spawn a mandatory use policy.  To try and forestall that,
however, the government has instituted a subtle coercion tactic: You can't
do business with Uncle Sam unless your products are "clipper equipped,"
according to National Institute for Standards and Technology Assistant
Deputy Director Raymond Kammer.

The Administration's desire for industry to sign-on as an early Clipper
"team player" was so overwhelming that it bribed AT&T into agreeing to
publicly support the idea, according to classified documents obtained by
Dispatch.

On the same day last April when Clipper was first unveiled, AT&T publicly
proclaimed it would be installing the chip in its encryption products.  A
classified April 30, 1993 memo from the Assistant Secretary of Defense
says: "[T]he President has directed that the Attorney General request that
manufacturers of communications hardware use the trapdoor chip, and at
least AT&T has been reported willing to do so (having been suitably
incentivised by promises of Government purchases)."

The government says "incentivised" while prosecuting attorney's all over
the country say, "bribed."  You make the call.

Take Your Privacy and Shove It
==============================

That same memo says the Clipper proposal is a "complex set of issues [that]
places the public's right to privacy in opposition to the public's desire
for safety."  If "privacy prevails... criminals and spies... consequently
prosper," the memo says.

What's the answer to such freeflowing privacy?  The memo says law
enforcement and national security agencies "propose that cryptography be
made available and required which contains a 'trapdoor' that would allow
law enforcement and national security officials, under proper supervision,
to decrypt enciphered communications."  The operative word here is
"required."

Two Track Dialog
================

While Clinton's policy wonks wring their hands over such issues as
universal access to the National Information Infrastructure, law
enforcement and national security officials couldn't care less, frankly.
The Working Group on Privacy for the Information Infrastructure Task Force
was told in clean, cold language that the desire of law enforcement is to
"front load" the NII with "intercept technologies."  Under the guise of "do
it now or we'll catch less bad guys."

It's all black or white to these guys.  Other classified Dept. of Defense
documents chime on this debate:  "This worthy goal (of building the NII) is
independent of arguments as to whether or not law enforcement and national
security officials will be able to read at will traffic passing along the
information superhighway."

This is not science fiction.  The Clipper chip is like a cancer that has
eaten into the fabric of all levels of government, including the military.
Classified DoD documents state that a "full-scale public debate is needed
to ascertain the wishes of U.S. citizens with regard to their privacy, and
the impact on public safety of preserving privacy at the expense of
wiretapping and communications intercept capabilities of law enforcement
and national security personnel."

In other words, they don't think you know what you want.  To them, it's a
kind of tradeoff, a twisted sort of privacy auction.  What do you bid?
Your privacy for two drug lords, a former KGB spy and a pedophile.  What's
the price?  Your government wants to know. Honest.

The jury's still out, according to these classified documents: "It is not
clear what the public will decide."

But you can rest safely, the Pentagon does.  Why?  Again from a secret
memo:  "In the meantime, DoD has trapdoor technology and the Government is
proceeding with development of the processes needed to apply that
technology in order to maintain the capability to perform licit intercept
of communications in support of law enforcement and national security."

Meeks out...